Passthrough of HBA330 on a Dell T630 server

mcfly9

Member
May 11, 2022
26
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Hi,

I am trying to passthrough a Dell H330 card in my Dell T630 server to my TrueNas Scale VM, but cannot get it working. I got this far:

Oct 13 22:39:18 proxmox kernel: [ 269.679300] vfio-pci 0000:03:00.0: DMAR: Device is ineligible for IOMMU domain attach due to platform RMRR requirement. Contact your platform vendor.

IOMMU enabled, driver is blacklisted, but no luck, looks like my BIOS won't allow this. Anyone managed to get this working on a 13th gen Dell server? What is the state of the art solution for this? Kernel patch?
Would it help if I replaced the HBA to a H730p?
 
Last edited:
Maybe you can update the BIOS or find a work-around in the other RMRR topics here? Sorry, I have no experience with this but it appears to be a not uncommon issue. Maybe contact Dell (or search their forum/documentation/website) as the message suggests?
 
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Upon reading some more about this, found a Dell forum post that H330 doesn't support IOMMU, but would need an H730. Contradicting to this, I have found some forum posts where people were able to passthrough the H330 too. Bit confused here.
Some thread also gave me an idea to flash the card to an IT firmware, maybe that will help.
If that fails, will try the kernel patch route...
 
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Oh yes, and have been using this card with ZFS on proxmox, but want to move the drives onto a truenas vm.
When saying moving to a H730, I meant continuing to use HBA mode on the RAID card...
 
Reporting back. Downgraded the kernel to 5.15.39-3, used the kernel patch of Aterfax, and was able to passthrough the H330 controller in HBA mode. TrueNas Scale working great so far! :)

Am still curious to understand whether cross-flashing from H330 (in IT mode) to HBA330 would eliminate the need for the kernel patch... my current understanding is that it won't, and would still need the patch. Anyone able to confirm that?
 
Reporting back. Downgraded the kernel to 5.15.39-3, used the kernel patch of Aterfax, and was able to passthrough the H330 controller in HBA mode. TrueNas Scale working great so far! :)

Am still curious to understand whether cross-flashing from H330 (in IT mode) to HBA330 would eliminate the need for the kernel patch... my current understanding is that it won't, and would still need the patch. Anyone able to confirm that?
to answer your question, I just went that route and cross-flashing my H330 mini to HBA 330 mini, and no you don't need the kernel patch anymore, it just works flawlessly and I passed it to OMV VM.

I was too lazy to downgrade the kernel and apply patch, so cross-flashing is way easier.
 
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Thanks for the info, great news. Any particular guide you have been following for crossflashing?
 
Thanks, I was able to crossflash my H330 to an HBA330!

Now I am back on the stock kernel (6.2.16-5), not on relaxable_rmrr. This way, I was able to passthrough the card (now a HBA330) to TrueNAS scale without any patchery! Yay!
 
Thanks, I was able to crossflash my H330 to an HBA330!

Now I am back on the stock kernel (6.2.16-5), not on relaxable_rmrr. This way, I was able to passthrough the card (now a HBA330) to TrueNAS scale without any patchery! Yay!
yup, it feels good when you don't have to patch things to get it work, lol.

I just installed TurnNAS core last night, now I am popping HDDs into the server, and get ready for the transfer from omv
 
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Hello
Could you please tele the steps? I have just cross flashed my H330 to HBA 330 and I cannot seem to get Truenas to boot. It crashes and hangs my Proxmox.
TIA
 
Hello
Could you please tele the steps? I have just cross flashed my H330 to HBA 330 and I cannot seem to get Truenas to boot. It crashes and hangs my Proxmox.
TIA
Check your IOMMU groups. That HBA is probaly sharing an IOMMU group with some important onboard devices and as you can only passthrough all devices of the same IOMMU group at a time (which are then not available anylonger to the host). Check output of pvesh get /nodes/{nodename}/hardware/pci --pci-class-blacklist ""
 
stupid question but do I need to have my Proxmox disk on somewhere not on the HBA card? I think that if I pass through the card to Truenas VM, my Proxmox boot disk is passed there as well and thus my Porxmox hangs. Is this correct ? If yes how did you do it on r630?
TIA
 
stupid question but do I need to have my Proxmox disk on somewhere not on the HBA card? I think that if I pass through the card to Truenas VM, my Proxmox boot disk is passed there as well and thus my Porxmox hangs. Is this correct ?
Yes. The whole HBA will be passed through with all disks attached to it. so you can't have your PVE disks connected to the same HBA. Connect them to the onboard ports of your mainboard or if that isn't possible you will have to buy another HBA card.
 
Flashed H330 mini to HBA firmware and all is well. PCI Passthrough is working as expected for truenas VM. Thanks for your help
 

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