Passing Though an LSI HBA to VM.

[Windows7ge]

I'm looking to pass-though an LSI HBA (the 9207-8i) to a VM. I already have everything configured as far as IOMMU groups, VT-d, enabling IOMMU within Proxmox, etc. It's all ready to go except the fact that Proxmox grabs the HBA when the OS starts and I need it to remain free. The Proxmox documentation outlines how to free it but here's the problem. I have three in the server. They all use the same driver and all have the same Device ID. I only want to pass-though one. The other two are needed on the host.

I do have a script I learned from someone for GPU pass-though purposes which I believe should work here but I don't know if Proxmox will play well with it. It will load the vfio-pci driver into the device based on the slot the card is connected to instead of the Device ID. An example of the script is as follows:

#!/bin/sh
PREREQS=""
DEVS="0000:03:00.0"
for DEV in $DEVS;
  do echo "vfio-pci" > /sys/bus/pci/devices/$DEV/driver_override
done

modprobe -i vfio-pci

This is then saved in:

/etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-top/bind_vfio.sh

The kernel should load. Check the device on PCI_e bus 00.03.00, and load the vfio-pci driver while allowing the other two identical HBAs to load the normal mpt3sas driver.

So here is the question. Can anyone say this should be fine or is there a more proper method of getting the same result because the two options in the documentation are not options here.

 

[Alwin]

As this post was made some time ago, did your configuration work in the end?

 

[Windows7ge]

As this post was made some time ago, did your configuration work in the end?

It did. I later learned that the vfio-pci driver is designed to be used with basically any hardware device that the host can do without. It's not strictly for GPUs.