Help getting IBM M1015 working with FreeNAS 9.1 Beta in ESXi

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rockdawg

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I am running ESXi 5.1 and I am trying to run a FreeNAS 9.1 Beta VM with the M1015 in passthru mode. I have the M1015 crossflashed to a 9211-8 in IT mode. The VM boots up and everything, but the drives connected to the M1015 are not detected by FreeNAS.

I've researched and found numerous complaints of hanging on boot, but, like I said, my VM boots up and I can access the webgui, but FreeNAS just doesn't see the drives. I tried a few suggestions of adding the following tunables with no luck:

hw.intr_storm_threshold=4000
hw.mps.disable_msix=1

Finally, here a section of the log that I think indicates a problem:

Code:
Jul  7 22:21:53 freenas kernel: mps0: <LSI SAS2008> port 0x4000-0x40ff mem 0xd24             00000-0xd2403fff,0xd2440000-0xd247ffff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci3
Jul  7 22:21:53 freenas kernel: mps0: IOC in unknown state 0xf0000000
Jul  7 22:21:53 freenas kernel: mps0: Cannot transition IOC to ready
Jul  7 22:21:53 freenas kernel: mps0: mps_attach failed to transition ready
Jul  7 22:21:53 freenas kernel: device_attach: mps0 attach returned 22


Anyone have any ideas?
 

cyberjock

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I know my M1015 with ESXi doesn't play completely right with FreeNAS 9. https://support.freenas.org/ticket/2293

I know that ticket is for interrupts but I couldn't access my disks either. But after getting the interrupt storm I knew it wouldn't necessarily work right anyway. Until that ticket is closed I'll be stuck on FreeNAS 8.3.1. Presumably a lot of people will be in that position(probably you too from the looks of it). :(

If you look at that ticket, the posts by noobsauce80 are mine. The "recommended" configuration on the forums for ESXi is an M1015 + PCI passthrough, which is what you and I are doing. There's probably a lot more people that have used our configuration and don't know that FreeNAS 9 isn't an option for us at the moment.
 

rockdawg

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OK. I tried it on 8.2.0-RELEASE-p1-x64 as I already had a VM running that and while I'm not seeing anything obvious during boot, I'm not seeing any drives in FreeNAS. Let me state that I am a noob with FreeNAS so maybe I'm not doing it right. I originally set up that VM sometime last year and while I didn't have any problems doing it, I don't recall the steps. But I used RDM'd drives on it not drives on a passthrough controller.

I am expecting that when I boot up freeNAS the attached drives should just show up under Storage>Volumes>View Disks. Is that the way it should work or do I need to do something? Would 8.3.1 make a difference?
 

cyberjock

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I would have tried 8.3.1-p2-x64 first. That's the only version I recommend at this point in time. I know that 8.3.1-p2 works fine on my system. It is also the only version I have personally used in FreeNAS.
 

rockdawg

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Ok. I'll Give That A Shot Tomorrow. But The Drives Should Just Appear Without Any Configuration, Right?
 

cyberjock

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They should, yes. If they don't I don't have any recommendations of things to try without an error message or something that gives a direction to go. It is possible that your hardware doesn't do the PCI passthrough properly. It's far more common than people realize.

What's your hardware?
 

rockdawg

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It turns out the problem was me. I thought I did, but I must not have rebooted my ESXi host after I installed the drives. I finally decided to reboot the host and now the drives show. I tried 9.1 again just to see and I get a whole different batch of error messages. I'll just stick with 8.3.1. Thanks for all you help anyways.
 
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