Having the hard drives sleeping in passthrough with ESXI

[waazdakka]

Hello,

 

I just succeed to install my Xpenology using TCRP on ESXI 6.7 (due to hardware limitation, my SAS card isn't supported by ESXI 7+), using my raw disks directly into DSM (2 disks RAID managed by DSM, 2 disk in basic mode).

I tried to activate the hibernation to the unused disks from DSM, but without success, and since the firmwares of the disks are generated by ESXI, I'm looking if I have something to manage on the ESXI interface to allow the disks to sleep...

Thanks!!

[waazdakka]

Hello!

Up? 😅

[dj_nsk]

В 11/18/2022 в 8:38 PM, waazdakka сказал:

... using my raw disks directly into DSM...

try using passthrough of the entire SAS controller into DSM instead of raw disks

[waazdakka]

Hello dj_nsk,

Thanks for your answer, I didn't even thought about this possibility... But I'm not sure how to achieve this. My SAS controller is in IT mode, but I'm not confident on how to present my SAS controller to the VM in passthrough mode
(I saw some tips in this KB but not sure it's relevant https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1010789 )

[Orphée]

Your CPU must be compatible with passthrough (the option will be greyed if not)

 

You just have to select the PCI card, enable passthrough, restart ESXi to take it into account.

Then you will be able to add it in your VM settings (remove RDM disks in the mean time)

 

And you may need to rebuild the loader to detect and activate matching module for your IT card. (Consider ARPL or TCRP with Friends M she'll)

 

Edit : if passthrough works, you can even migrate to ESXi 7.x as the card won't be managed anymore by ESXi.

But you won't be able to revert to RDM in case needed.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Orphée

[waazdakka]

Wow thanks for the tip. I guess I have the possibility to use the passthrough mode:

 

 

And if I follow your advices, I have to rebuild everything from scratch I guess,

Since I'm on my production NAS, I have to backup everything, move everything... not for today ^^' I have to test all of this on another machine first 😅

 

When you say I won't be able to revert to RDM, what case do you reffer to?

Are there pros and cons to the passthrough mode and RDM mode?

 

Thanks again for all your help!