Step by step to passthrough SSD drives directly on VMWare EXSi 7 as RDMs

Step by step to passthrough SSD drives directly on VMWare EXSi 7 as RDMs - Printable Version

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Step by step to passthrough SSD drives directly on VMWare EXSi 7 as RDMs - RustyOx - 09-09-2021

In this example, I am going to show you how to passthrough the Samsung EVO 840 SSD driver to ESXi 7.0 Update 2 via RDM(raw disk mapping ).

I have 3 SSD in the setup, Crucial MX500 1TB, Samsung 830 EVO 256GB and Samsung 840 EVO 250GB. The 1TB SSD is the main storage and hold the VPS for FreeNas 11.2 (Yes, I know the newer FreeNas 11.3 and TrueNas 12 are arleady available). Some of the photo are from EVO 830 and some of the screenshots are from EVO 840.

If you already read documents from other sources, here is the key notes to make it success.

Make sure the target disk is not shown in storage, otherwise the mapping will failed.

[attachment=638]

Unmount the storage if it is already appeared in storage pane.

You need another disk place to store the RDM mapping link (will explain it later)

In this example, I am going to map raw disk Samsung EVO 840, but the vmdk link is saving in the SDD Crucial MX500 1TB SSD.

Detailed instructions are in the next post due to limitation of 5 attachments in each post.

RE: Step by step to passthrough SSD drives directly on VMWare EXSi 7 as RDMs - RustyOx - 09-09-2021

Step 1, ssh to the ESXi server

[attachment=649]
by default, ssh is not enabled, so enable and start the service, then use putty to connect to the ESXi server.

Step 2, create mapping link

get the disk id using "ls -l /vmfs/devices/disks"

Code:
ls -l /vmfs/devices/disks

[attachment=639]

creat vmdk link to the target ssd

Code:
vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____Samsung_SSD_840_EVO_250GB_______________S1DBNSBF442715E_____ /vmfs/volumes/ssd1tb/vdisks/ss840_rdm_1.vmdk

vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____SAMSUNG_SSD_830_Series__________________S0Z4NEAC801058______ /vmfs/volumes/ssd1tb/vdisks/ss830_rdm_1.vmdk

[attachment=648]

I am creating the vmdk link to the physical drive 840 EVO and Samsung 830 EVO on ssd1tb which is another SSD already in my system.
If you create the vmdk on the target physical drive, it will failed in the later step "adding existing hdd" with errors like ""Incompatible device backing specified for device 5".

Step 3 Add new SCSI controller
[attachment=641]
[attachment=642]
You may need to change the "Disk Compatibility" from Physical to Virtual, then you can change the "Disk Mode" to "Independent - persistent". It is a raw mapped physical disk, so snapshots is not supported. This step is mentioned by others, but I don’t think it is necessary, as “independent - persistent “ should not apply to physical disks.

RE: Step by step to passthrough SSD drives directly on VMWare EXSi 7 as RDMs - RustyOx - 09-09-2021

Step 4 Add the HDD with the created vmdk link

Click add hard disk -> existing hard disk

[attachment=643]

Select the vmdk link

[attachment=644]

[attachment=645]
You may need to change the "Disk Compatibility" from Physical to Virtual, then you can change the "Disk Mode" to "Independent - persistent". It is a raw mapped physical disk, so snapshots is not supported.

[attachment=646]

Reference: https://gist.github.com/Hengjie/1520114890bebe8f805d337af4b3a064