Unraid in ESXi v6.7-U3

[ez2002]

Just wanted to share my recent experience migrating from physical server to ESXi for unraid.

It took me quite significant time gathering and reading tips/documents on the internet before making the move.

My hesitation was whether unraid really need "hw-passthrough" or "disk RDM" is sufficient.

 

From what I have experienced .. as long your CPU support virtualization then it is enough to jump on the virtualization wagon.

I hope this will help others that wanted to move to ESXi and does not want to upgrade their Motherboard to passthrough/iommu capable.

 

Physical setup:

Unraid v6.8.1

• Motherboard M5A78L-M-PLUS-USB3
• CPU AMD FX8320E
• LSI 9207-8i [in hba/IT mode]
• 1x SSD for cache disk
• 7x HDD
• Powersupply 380W
• unraid license on 4GB usb stick

 

New ESXi setup:

ESXi v6.7-U3 - reuse all the hw from above

• Motherboard M5A78L-M-PLUS-USB3
• have to add Realtek ethernet driver [https://vibsdepot.v-front.de/wiki/index.php/List_of_currently_available_ESXi_packages]
• I cannot passthru LSI 9207-8i as the motherboard does not support iommu
• Verify that in unraid vm settings, SCSI Controller 0 = "VMware Paravirtual" - this is important so the HDD Serial Number can be passthru to unraid (otherwise you will need to rebuilt your parity disk)
• 7x HDD connect to LSI 9207-81 and configure them as RDM directly from ESXi

             a. esxi > VM > Edit Settings > Add harddisk > New Raw disk >

             b. on the "Hard disk" setting .. configure: Controller location = "SCSI Controller 0" and Disk Compatibility = Physical and Disk Mode = "Independent - persistent"

• for the Cache drive - SSD, I connect it to the motherboard SATA port. There is a known issue with LSI 9207-8i not supporting TRIM (unless LSI downgraded to fw P16).

             use this link to passthrough the indvidual SSD drive to unraid as RDM - [https://gist.github.com/Hengjie/1520114890bebe8f805d337af4b3a064].

             I cannot use the method i use for the HDD.

• use plopkexec iso to boot unraid via the usb stick (so I can keep the license) - download here https://www.plop.at/en/plopkexec/download.html - choose "all precompiled versions, 32/64 bit, EFI, ISO."

         extract the tar and copy the iso to your ESXi datastore.

• back to the VM edit settings > CD/DVD Drive 1 > Datastore ISO file > CD/DVD Media = plopkexec64.iso
• also set your VM to boot to BIOS and change the boot device to CD/DVD
• passthrough your unraid usb stick by adding a new USB device
• download unraid specific vmwaretool from appspace "openVMTools_compiled" after you have successfully boot your unraid

 

Result:

1. after reboot, plopkexec will auto search for usb device and boot from it
2. if you use SCSI Paravirtual, the disks will reallign as the serial numbers got passthru as-is as before
3. remember to install "openVMTools_compiled"
4. upgraded unraid to v6.8.2 and it finished successfully
5. on unraid Main page, SMART and spin up/down are reflected correctly. 

 

I am glad I made the change to ESXi .. a better use of the FX8320 cpu

 

==== Some screenshot of the configuration ====

HDD RDM and SCSI controller setting:

 

SSD rdm:

 

Plopkexec and USB stick passthru:

 

Unraid dashboard:

 

Disk spun down:

 

Disk spun up:

 

Temp work for the HDD on LSI:

 

Though Temp is not working for cache SSD that passthrough via MB sata port:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 15, 2020 by ez2002
add screenshots