Hi Simon.H
Welcome to the communites
Thanks for research and the link , even since long time I was littlebit confuse to find out exact model.
"He Conquers, Who Conquers Himself".![]()
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
Did anyone ever manage to get the Atheros gigabit LAN working on the Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H with ESXi 5? I have this board with a Core i7 3770 and it runs ESXi 5 well, Vt-d enabled in the BIOS but nothing has been seriously tested yet - just the basic install and a couple of VMs for a test. The Intel 82579V LAN is recognised after following these instructions http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2194&start=170 but the Atheros is proving more tricky.
It shows up:
lspci
000:006:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications
lspci -vv
000:006:00.0 Ethernet controller Network controller: Atheros Communications
Class 0200: 1969:1083
Google hasn't found the required drivers for me. Any idea?
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
Hi,
just to clarofy this.
I got my zotac z77 itx up and running with vt-d enabled and full working.
With esxi5 the nics are fully supported.
I am absolut satisfied with this mainboard.
regards
martin
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
@hellesangel
I have another question about that motherboard. I have the same motherboard and processor that you have. There are two Marvell drive controllers on that motherboard in addition to an Intel Series 7 C216 controller.
Which controller(s) did you connect your SATA drives to? Also, did you need to add any OEM.tgz files into a custom ISO as you did with the Intel NIC driver? I follwoed the custom ISO steps you pointed us to. When I boot up, I get past the missing NIC error now thanks to the custom ISO. But now I get a no drives found message when it comes time to install.
Also, to answer your question, I have found NO information regarding a driver for the second NIC on these boards, which is the Atheros 8151 model.
Thanks
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
Norbs wrote:
...
BTW there is another board that is identical to this but full atx as opposed to mini, uses the same NIC as well. I'm pretty sure it will work as well but have not tested but I really doubt it will be any different results.
Z77A-G45:
Enjoy!
Thanks for the post. I bought Z77A-G45 based on suggestion here, and can confirm the NIC works out of the box. VT-d works for the onboard USB3.0 controller and a PCI-e SATA RAID card.
On the other hand, I have been struggling ot passthrough video, like many others posting on this thread VMDirectPath and ATI Radeon (http://communities.vmware.com/thread/297072?start=0&tstart=0). I have tried two different video cards, both failed to passthrough.
Radeon HD 5450 : BSOD
nVidia Geforce 8600GT: Device cannot start reported in Windows Device Manager
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
All (and hellesangels)
I answered my own question regarding which SATA ports to use to on the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H motherboard.
The internal gray ports are the SATA ports on the Marvell 88SE9172 controllers. There are three. Two are in the stacked bank of SATA ports, and one is along the edge of the motherboard. They are all gray colored. They are all SATA III (6.0 Gbit/s).
The white port contains two SATA III (6.0 Gbit/s) ports on the Intel Z77 chipset controller.
The four remaining black ports are all SATA II (3.0 Gbit/s) ports on the Intel Z77 chipset controller.
I used a white connector Intel SATA III port (6.0 Gbit/s) for my SSD drive and a black connector Intel SATA II port (3.0 Gbit/s) for the optical DVD-ROM drive. Things are working fine now. ESXi 5 saw the drive and installed to it without a problem. The installer apparently could not see the hard disk when it was attached to the Marvell controller ports, so I am led to believe that there is no Marvell controller driver resident on the ESXi 5 installation ISO.
~~~
I have been looking for a VMWare driver for the embedded Qualcomm Atheros AR8151 NIC. I still have not found anything, but in the meantime I am up and running using the Intel 82579V NIC also embedded on the motherboard.
If network throughput becomes an isue using only one NIC, I may investigate using a PCI slot-based NIC to add additional throughput. Not sure if I will need to do that though as this is a machine that I am only using for personal training purposes. So far networking is fine in and out of 8 lightly used VMs.
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
i want to get a shuttle box with a Z77 chip motherboard and i7-3770 cpu.
and after reading this thread, i assume, that combo will work fine with ESXi.
my question is regarding a CPU with embedded graphics or get one without embedded graphics and get a graphics card. i would like to be able to passthrough to my VMs a really good graphics card if possible.
anyone help me with that question?
tia
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
I've got ESXi 5.0u1 running on an Intel DQ77KB motherboard with an I7-3770s CPU inside a min-box M350 case, and it works. I am going to use this in a backup site (my vacation home) for my little consulting business. Space is tight in the closet where it's intended to go which is why I picked the form factor. The vt-d stuff works, although if you pass through the on board USB controller it's kind of flaky and the VMs don't recognize it as USB 3. I ended up buying a seperate PCI express USB 3 card, and a PCI express wireless card. These both pass through just fine to the VMs.
The only thing I've noticed that isn't great is that the write speed on the disk, at least when copying VMs onto the machine, isn't very good. From what I've read it's because ESXi does a lot of checkpointing and log synchronization type stuff while writing to datastores, and because the disk controller on the board doesn't have any write cache, and apparently ESXi doesn't either, performace suffers. I've got a 6 gb/sec 1tb hard drive, and when uploading VMs to the box across a local network with a 1gb network connection and jumbo frames enabled, I'm still only getting about 30 megabytes per second transfer rate. I'm not sure that this is going to matter for the VMs so much because the VM o/s typically has its own write cache, although I haven't done enough testing yet to see if it matters to the VMs or not. As this is intended to be a backup box, and due to the case size constraints, I don't have a second drive for a RAID configuration, even though I think the board supports it.
I'd also caution you about putting ESXi 5.1 on a box you intend to use PCI passthrough with. I tried it and had to go back because of problems. See this thread: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/417736?start=0&tstart=0
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
@srwsol, someone recently posted this link regarding USB passthrough. not sure if it is relevant to your issue or not:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/2121983#2121983
that MB you have has a bit of everything including 2 LAN ports. looks like the i7-3770 and 77 chipset is a go. i'm gonna go and order the shuttle then with the i7-3770 cpu. can't ever get the "perfect" combo, so time to order what i can.
i'll need to use PCI passthrough, or i should say, i want to make use of it. i'm still not clear if the embedded grx on the this cpu is good for passthrough or get a separate grx card. i think i'll get a "supported" grx card too.
headed over to the link you supplied to read up on all that.
appreciate the info, good luck with yours
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
If you are going to get a micro-atx check the power requirements of the I7-3770 versus the I7-3770s relative to the power supply you will have and the number of fans. I ended up going with the 3770s, and sacrificed little bit of performance (slower clock speed), because of power and heat issues in the small case. I read a post where someone said that the regular 3770 worked in the DQ77KB mobo, even though it's not listed as supported. Definately don't go with the I7-3770K as you lose the vt-d stuff as part of the trade off for it being able to be overclocked.
Regarding the second lan port, it's primary purpose is for the Intel AMT support. I've tested that and it works. However, VMWare ESXi doesn't have drivers for it so it's not recognized, but i guess you could pass it through to a VM if you wanted. Supposedly the second lan port can pull double duty and be used for both the AMT stuff and by the o/s at the same time, although I have read posts where people have reported things like dropped packets if it's doing double duty. I'm just using it for AMT.
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
regarding the PCI(e) crashes with ESXi 5.1, i'll go ahead and order my hardware and install 5.0 if a fix isn't available by the time i put together the harware and test it. its all for home me home net, but still, bugs are a nuisance & problematic.
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
Oh, one last thing when you install ESXi. On the DQ77KB there is a bios bug that causes problems booting to GPT partitions, which is the default partition type ESXi 5 creates on a clean install. The bug causes the bios not to boot to a GPT partition unless you hit F10 during the boot sequence and manually pick that drive each time. Not sure if that's across all the bios's for this chipset or just my mobo.
To get around this problem, during the install hit Shift-O on the screen that asks you if you want to change install options. A prompt will open up with an option containing the word "weasel" already there. Leave that one alone, enter a space and then "formatwithmbr". That tells ESXi that you want it to create a MBR partition instead of GPT.
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
@srwsol
You said:
>> I ended up buying a seperate PCI express USB 3 card, and a PCI express wireless card. These both pass through just fine to the VMs.
Can you post the exact make and model of these cards?
I am looking for a USB 3.0 PCI Express card that works with 5.0.
Also, are the posts seen as USB 3.0 ports by the guest OS when you pass through? Or just USB 2.0?
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
Hi tpsboston:
Actually what I bought was a mini pci express card (I saw that I didn't put "mini" on the previous post) as that's the slot that was available on the tiny DQ77KB motherboard. Here's a link to what I bought: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158292
When the card is passed through to a VM it works exactly like it would if he VM were running natively on the machine. I ran my tests on it with a Windows 7 32 VM and it correctly recognized the card and installed the right drivers. I was able to plug in and remove USB devices from the card just the same way I would in a non-virtualized environment and the VM handled it perfectly. Performance wise I'd say that the throughput is pretty close to native if not truely native. When I tried copying files to and from a USB 3 hard drive I was getting throughput in the 80 megabytes / sec range, which is in line with what that drive does in a non-virtualized environment. As far as I can tell in every respect that card works with the VM exactly as it would if the VM were the native host O/S.
I've also got an Intel half size mini pci express wireless card installed which is being used by a Vyatta Router linux VM on this same box. It too operates exactly as it would in a native environment as far as I can tell. Linux recoginzed the card and set it up as wlan0 exactly as it would have in a native environment.
Now, the one thing that doesn't appear to work quite right is if I pass through the on board USB controllers to VMs. This mobo supposedly has three USB controllers, at least that's what ESXi shows when I bring up the PCI configuration screen. I ran some tests trying to figure out which USB controller operated which ports by assigning them one at a time to be a PCI pass through device. However, when I did that it appeared as if all the USB ports on the motherboard were assigned to the pass through controller, no matter which USB controller I picked for pass thorugh. This was very strange. Also, the Windows VM never recognized any of the USB ports as USB 3 and always installed USB 2 drivers. Additionally, by assigning any on board USB controller as a pass through device I lost the ability to communicate with the ESXi console via the USB keyboard, even when using the Intel AMT remote control functionality. Fortunately the changes could be undone via the vsphere client. This is why I ended up buying a seperate USB 3 card.
From my testing it looks like installed cards pass through perfectly, but passing through PCI devices integrated into the motherboard is more of a hit or miss process. I didn't test passing through one of the on board NIC cards, and of course couldn't test passing through the disk controller that connects to the datastore, so I don't know if this screwy behavior with on board devices only occurrs with certain devices on certain motherboards, or is more widespread.
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
good to know, thanks!
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
Configuration will work?
PCI-E 2.1 ASUS EAH5450 SILENT/DI/1GD3(LP), 1gb, DDR3, Low Profile, Ret
WD Caviar Green WD30EZRX, 3tb, HDD, SATA III
CORSAIR XMS3 Classic CMX16GX3M4A1333C9 DDR3- 4x 4gb, 1333, DIMM, Ret
INTEL Core i7 3770, LGA 1155, OEM [cpu intel lga1155 i7-3770 oem]
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-Q67M-D2H-B3
Unfortunately I can not experiment
and want to get a working configuration.
your opinion?
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
@dimage, the "Q67" chipset is supposed to work, i.e. has VT-d.
http://ark.intel.com/products/51997/Intel-Desktop-Board-DQ67SW
the "Q77" chipset is listed has working with VT-d and is newer
http://ark.intel.com/products/64027/Intel-BD82Q77-PCH
though their listing for a desktop board with Q77 doesn't list VT-d, odd?
http://ark.intel.com/products/59044/Intel-Desktop-Board-DQ77MK
for a ESXi whitebox i wouldn't want the integrated graphics on the board but thats just me. still trying to decide on a MB
others on the boards here can offer more help and insight for you i hope
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
Hi all!
So I bought ga-z77x-d3h mobo and Intel CPU (without "K") and VT-D if fully supported on ESXi 5.1 which is great.
I installed ESX onto USB 2.0 stick plugged into USB3.0 port. Also doing great
Now my problem is that if I install ESX onto USB 3.0 stick it installs just fine and also boots but it stops at "Running usbarbitrator script".
This happens only if USB 3.0 stick is plugged into USB 3.0 port on MB.
If I put this same stick in USB 2.0 port server boots up just fine.
Any ideas how to boot and run ESX from USB 3.0 stick on usb 3.0 port?
It boots waaaay faster than on USB 2.0 port but this honestly is the only difference I noticed...
Regards,
Greg
P.S.
If someone interested, Marvell controller on this MB has native support since 5.1 but Atheros NIC has to be enabled with VIB install and then it also works
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
Hi,
just installed 5.1 on Z77M-D3H, using net-atl1e-1.0.1.14.x86_64.vib from here http://www.aligrant.com/?p=news/archive&v=2012-03
using esxi-customizer found here http://www.v-front.de/p/esxi-customizer.html
installed flawlessy and seems to work fine.
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Re: vt-d enabled Ivy Bridge motherboard recommendations
Just in case someone is interested in another working "whitebox" config for ESXi 5.1 here is one I've just built for my home lab about 2 month ago.
This is a basic build so it hasn't got a decent hard disk RAID card installed but that can be added later, I just wanted to see what basic config I could get going first and then start adding better hardware to it as more money becomes available
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 3.4 GHz, Socket 1155
Memory: 2 x Kingston ValueRAM KVR16N11/8, 1x8GB, DDR3-1600, PC3-12800, CL11, DIMM
Motherboard: Intel DQ77MK Motherboard, Socket 1155, Intel Q77, 4xDDR3, 1xPCIe-16, 1xPCIe-1, Firewire, VGA, DVI, RAID, M-ATX, OEM
PSU: Enermax NAXN ENP650AWT, 650W ATX PSU
Optical drive: Samsung SH-222BB DVD Writer, DVD 16R/22W/8RW, CD 48R/48W/48RW, Internal, SATA
Case: NZXT H2 Classic Silent Midtower Chassis Black
HDD: Any sata drive you want to use, just no RAID until an addon RAID controller card is installed.
At first I was put off from using a Micro ATX board for a server type machine but it turned out to be a great motherboard to use, both onboard network cards are working for me in ESXi 5.1. All I had to do is use the ESXi-Customiser and add a driver for one of the on-board network cards into the ESXi install ISO image, the 2nd card was already supported by ESXi 5.1 natively.
This page lists exact instructions on adding the network card driver into the ESXi image:
http://www.ivobeerens.nl/2011/12/13/vmware-esxi-5-whitebox-nic-support/
The only other thing I had to do to get ESXi to install was to flash the motherboard BIOS to the latest version, without a BIOS upgrade it would not boot properly.
Also that motherboard has space for 4 RAM DIMM's so I have the ability to add another 16GB of RAM to this server at a later stage if I need it.
(The board supports a maximum of 32GB RAM)
I know in earlier posts many people are using Asrock motherboards because they claim to support VT-d but here in NZ Asrock don't have a good reputation and I prefer to avoid using an unreliable brand. My friend used to sell Asrock in their computer shop and had many many failures, so much so that they actually withdrew that product brand all together. Maybe it has gotten better since but I didn't want to risk it.
Btw, I went for a Q77 board instead of a newer Z77 board because Q77 is clearly listed as supporting VT-d, but for Z77 there seems to be varied support between different motherboard makers. It just didn't seem 100% to me so I went with a sure choice.
Hope this is of use to someone here,
cheers,
G.
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