ESXI 6.7U3: 3615 - 3617 or 918 for Plex usage (Hardware decoding)

[davidoff]

Hello friends,

I decided to change my ESXI and remake everything on a new machine.

I took a DELL Precision T1700 (XEON 1270 V3 + 16GB), the graphics card is a Quadro Pro K600.

I have a Plexpass that allows me to activate hardware decoding on Plex.

Since my processor is a Haswell, I can imagine an installation in 918, 3615 or 3617.

What do you recommend?

Your opinion interests me greatly, thank you in advance

[Olegin]

HW transcoding will not work under esxi, only SW. You need baremetal installation and real sn and mac to start HW transcoding.

[merve04]

Also only works with 918.

[Byolock]

On 11/27/2019 at 6:35 AM, Olegin said:

HW transcoding will not work under esxi, only SW. You need baremetal installation and real sn and mac to start HW transcoding.

Thats not true, you can passthrough a integrated Intel VGA adapter for example and get HW Transcoding working, at least you could with DSM 6.2. Just Updated to 6.3 and /dev/dri/renderD128 is gone, but that seems to be a more general Problem. I can't see why a dedicated GPU should work different. 

 

Or is this an Issue related to how Plex works? (I Use Emby inside a Docker Container)

Edited May 3, 2020 by Byolock

[flyride]

You can have hardware transcoding (918), RAIDF1 (3615/3617) or support for 16 threads (3617).  You can't have it all at once.

FMI: https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/13333-tutorialreference-6x-loaders-and-platforms/

 

 

Has anyone ever demonstrated a successful ESXi iGPU passthrough?  I agree that it should be possible, but I have not seen any posts confirming it.

[pmchan]

Yes, @Leroy and @Byolock, could you please describe how you were able to get working igu passthrough in ESXi? You're the only ones I've seen here who were successful at hardware transcode in VM. This would be a major information for other users, for example, I always advise newcomers to go baremetal if they want HW transcoding in Plex; your directions could change a lot of things.

I know 6.2.3 update made your dev/dri disappear, di you try to replace extra and extra2 by the IG-88 drivers extensions?

Edited May 4, 2020 by pmchan

[Leroy]

@flyride I didnt know this was actually such a big deal and many people achived this. I had it working yes, with 6.2.3 its gone so i can't demonstrate it. Or is there a possibility to Downgrade?  
@pmchan
I actually didn't do anything special. I set the "Intel VGA compatible controller" to passthrough and added it to the XPEnology VM. After booting up i got dev/dri & HW Transcoding.
 

23 minutes ago, pmchan said:

I know 6.2.3 update made your dev/dri disappear, di you try to replace extra and extra2 by the IG-88 drivers extensions?

 

I tried that, but my Passthrough LSI Controller disappears that way. I can try a seperate VM later without its own controller, but still need to get that controller working.
Furthermore, i never tested Plex, only Emby. Though i see no reason they should behave different?

[pmchan]

il y a une heure, Leroy a dit :

I actually didn't do anything special. I set the "Intel VGA compatible controller" to passthrough and added it to the XPEnology VM. After booting up i got dev/dri & HW Transcoding.

I'm replying here to your message regarding DSM 6.2.3 update to let IG-88 topic cleaner.

Glad to know reverting back extra and extra2 to jun's originals after updating to 6.2.3 did the trick for you. Did you check if you had hard drives smart informations available? It was another loss for LSI SATA controller users after this update. 0.11 corrected this for me on baremetal.

 

il y a une heure, Leroy a dit :

Furthermore, i never tested Plex, only Emby. Though i see no reason they should behave different?

Yes, emby, Plex or Jellyfin are relying on dev/dri the same way, but I still don't understand how you get it to work while so many people using VM are failing

Is VT-d enabled in your bios and regarding this matter, could you please tell us what's your motherboard model? I saw CPU is Pentium Gold G5400 with UHD 610 igpu.

while playing a video with hw transcode active, could you please ssh to your nas and type the htop command to see what's your ffmpeg line looks like?
Sorry for the troubles but you're a rare bird so any information could help others ^^;

 

Edited May 4, 2020 by pmchan

[Leroy]

No Problem, glad to help. 

 

No SMART does not work. Interrestion though : it did work just after the 6.2.3 Update without any extra files.

How can i copy the whole command line from htop? Its very long. I can tell you it includes -init_hw_device vaapi=vad1:/dev/dri/renderD128 and -hwaccel_device:v:0 /dev/dri/renderD128

Board is a Gigabyte H370 HD3. Cant look up if VT-D is enabled right now. Will do later.

[Leroy]

@pmchan
 

Below some BIOS settings might be relevant : 

VT-d is enabled
Internal Graphics : Auto
DVMT pre-Allocated : 64M
DVMT Total GFX Memory : MAX

 

--EDIT--
 

And something i forgot : I think it was important to disconnect any Monitor from the onboard graphics adapter before booting the esxi machine.
 

Edited May 11, 2020 by Leroy

[pmchan]

Thank you very much for those informations and the precision regarding the esxi server which may have to be headless for the igpu passthrough to work in xpenology.

 

[gazumping]

In case someone else comes across this question - yes I was able to get this working with quicksync hardware transcoding with ESXi (8) (6700k skylake)

Restart without any monitor connected (to be safe)
Under Host - Manage - Hardware - Intel 530 - Toggle Passthrough (activate)
On the VM - add PCI device (Intel 530)

Start VM
For my VM I rebuilt the loader (DS920+ dsm7.2.1 Update 1) and startup (install/migrate)
once in UI, ssh in as su (or use script) and "modprobe i915"
I was able to see /dev/dri then.

Edited December 29, 2023 by gazumping
updated to include quicksync HW transcoding