SATA HDD pass-through

[kopsfd]

Hi,

I searched a lot but can't find the right answer to my relatively easy question.

I have a Intel Board with onboard SATA Controller.

Is it possible to pass-through some of this SATA-HDD drives to a virtual machine (KVM because Windows and BSD)?

And if it is possible where and how I have to do this?

Thanks a lot

 

[pirateghost]

Why? what benefit do you think you will get doing this vs just configuring a virtual disk?

 

[FastLaneJB]

Hi,

I searched a lot but can't find the right answer to my relatively easy question.

I have a Intel Board with onboard SATA Controller.

Is it possible to pass-through some of this SATA-HDD drives to a virtual machine (KVM because Windows and BSD)?

And if it is possible where and how I have to do this?

Thanks a lot

Yes this is possible. See this post on how to do it. It's quite easy and works well in my experience.

http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/6192-Physical-disk-pass-through?p=35092#post35092

 

[kopsfd]

@FastLaneJB

Thank you for your answer - I will have a try.

@pirateghost

I want to create a NAS with ZFS filesystem and therefor I need direct HDD access.

For ZFS and its benefits it is necessary to connect the HDDs directly (it is recommend not to virtualize this - but I hope with direct hardware pass-through it should work)

And in case it doesn't work like I planned - I can remove these HDDs and use them 1:1 in a fresh installation without virtualization-layer (and the data remains)

Thank you very much

 

[pirateghost]

@FastLaneJB

Thank you for your answer - I will have a try.

@pirateghost

I want to create a NAS with ZFS filesystem and therefor I need direct HDD access.

For ZFS and its benefits it is necessary to connect the HDDs directly (it is recommend not to virtualize this - but I hope with direct hardware pass-through it should work)

And in case it doesn't work like I planned - I can remove these HDDs and use them 1:1 in a fresh installation without virtualization-layer (and the data remains)

Thank you very much

I asked because you had mentioned windows VM. I use freenas as well and can honestly say that it is not a good idea to virtualize it.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

[kopsfd]

I asked because you had mentioned windows VM. I use freenas as well and can honestly say that it is not a good idea to virtualize it.

Hi,

thank you for your answer.

Why it's a bad idea to virtualize freenas when the hdd's are passed-through? I thougt it should work with direct hdd-access?

What problems will occur and how do I realize it?

 

[pirateghost]

Hi,

thank you for your answer.

Why it's a bad idea to virtualize freenas when the hdd's are passed-through? I thougt it should work with direct hdd-access?

What problems will occur and how do I realize it?

Are you already over on the FreeNAS forums? I just saw a post from today about this very question.

If you havent read already, you should have a look at the following 2 posts:
http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...Virtual-Machine!&p=58364&viewfull=1#post58364
http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...ot-a-guide-to-not-completely-losing-your-data

Be wary.