Question for vmware ESX users.

[rrambo]

Does anyone know if ESX, specifically the now free ESXi will recognize and pass a tuner card on to a guest os?

I'm close to building a new home server and would love to have 8.04 server running sage in a vm on ESXi. I'm doubtful but hope someone knows whether or not hypervisor can deal with a tuner card.

Thanks

[gplasky]

You'll have try and let us know but I don't think so. You will have better luck with a USB tuner or the HDHR network encoder.

Gerry

[rrambo]

Originally Posted by gplasky

You'll have try and let us know but I don't think so. You will have better luck with a USB tuner or the HDHR network encoder.

Gerry

I'll give it a try.. it's only money, huh?

[null_pointer_us]

I recently read that some kind of advanced device memory remapping feature -- I forget the acryonym -- would allow virtualized operating systems to natively access normal PCI/PCIe devices, but most consumer PCI/PCIe devices don't support this feature. It's mostly used in server hardware. If this feature were supported by consumer devices, I'd be able to run Linux but let a virtualized Vista run SageTV and 3D games. *sigh* Maybe someday...

[harrijay]

if your talking about money, VMware released esxi for free which from what it looks like is a stripped down version of the full flavor, this might be worth an initial test that way you are not spending alot

[Ikarius]

VMware server 2.0 beta will pass some USB devices. I haven't tried passing my HD-PVR into a VM, but it would be an interesting experiment.


I haven't even played with ESXi yet; the plain "server" product seems much more suited to a home environment.

--Ikarius

[jpappas]

Originally Posted by rrambo

Does anyone know if ESX, specifically the now free ESXi will recognize and pass a tuner card on to a guest os?

ESXi has a VERY small HCL. I am sure that it is not going to work without a substantial (if not infinite) work investment.

Originally Posted by rrambo

I'm close to building a new home server and would love to have 8.04 server running sage in a vm on ESXi. I'm doubtful but hope someone knows whether or not hypervisor can deal with a tuner card.

I am sure that it is not supported. Granted I am only working on the information that VMWare provides, but I am equally sure that the work required would rapidly overwhelm any useful returns. ESXi was released as "Freely distributable" in order to ease OEM integration of the "thin" hypervisior into server systems. IMHO, without an existing VI3 footprint (specifically VirtualCenter management in place), it's value is very low for anyone else. I would be interested to know if you can load it onto a system that does not have a supported SCSI/SAS controller card. Additionally, the NIC driver set included in the vmkernel is equally small, so you may boot, but not be able to connect to the network.

Let us know how it goes!
jp

[harrijay]

for those that are interested I have 2 HD PVR's hooked up to vmware server 2.0 and have been having no issue at all. I have been running this way for 3 weeks now

[bcjenkins]

Interesting, but why not use the linux drivers?

B

[harrijay]

I have not gotten around to compiling the driver and getting it all setup. I was planning on doing that within the next couple weeks. I was also waiting for the driver to get a little more stable and the new firmware.

[bcjenkins]

No stability issues here.

B

[Glazza]

ESX3i or no i will not pass thru the tuner cards.

You would have better luck with the Workstation/Server products!

Cheers
David

[kbyrd]

Originally Posted by Glazza

ESX3i or no i will not pass thru the tuner cards.

You would have better luck with the Workstation/Server products!

Cheers
David

None of the currently released VMware products do PCI passthru of arbitrary devices.

...and now that time has marched on, I need to change this. As other pointed out in later posts to this thread, ESX 4 does have PCI/PCIe passthru on motherboards with VT-d enabled.

[Rex]

VMware Server 2.0 can pass through USB 2.0 highspeed and I've had some success using a USB tuner stick, only down side is that VMware seems a little sensitive about sometime not associating a USB device to the guest's USB controller after reboot, so whilst it works, I'm not sure its a bullet proof config.

VMware Server 2.0 I/O is not as good as it could be either, but using a pass thru SATA disk as a SCSI device worked okay.

[kbyrd]

Sure, USB devices works just fine. The USB can be "connected" to the host or the guest, but not both at the same time. About this SATA/SCSI passthru, was that raw disk mode?

[Rex]

Server2 will allow you to pass thru SCSI devices directly to the guest, which is the only solution to directly access a host file system without going through something like samba, because VMware decided to disable the shared folders in Server2
So... SATA disks appear as SCSI devices to VMware, so when you create a guest you can just select the SCSI device number from a drop down list and after you've mounted the filesystem in the guest, you're good to go.
Search the server 2 VM community site for more info on the subject, only fiddly thing is figuring out the SCSI device number if you've got lots of drives.

[chain]

Originally Posted by Rex

VMware Server 2.0 can pass through USB 2.0 highspeed and I've had some success using a USB tuner stick, only down side is that VMware seems a little sensitive about sometime not associating a USB device to the guest's USB controller after reboot, so whilst it works, I'm not sure its a bullet proof config.

VMware Server 2.0 I/O is not as good as it could be either, but using a pass thru SATA disk as a SCSI device worked okay.

Hallo Rex,

how do you pass thru SATA disk as a SCSI device...

do you change the *.vmx file or what ever
I know this is not the Problem here but some info would be grate

[jpappas]

how do you pass thru SATA disk as a SCSI device...

I am pretty sure that nearly every newer guest OS and host OS use SCSI calls now, regardless of whether the controller is or not. SATA uses many SCSI commands in the first place, so it almost looks like SCSI at the host OS level. On my PATA systems (opensuse 11.1, VMServer 2.0 Build 122956), the disks appear as SCSI (sda/b/c) to the OS.

On VMWare, it depends on the guest OS as to which SCSI driver is used. The guest OS wizard uses either the BusLogic or LSILogic virtual SCSI adapters, as those are natively supported by most OS's without any "Driver Disk" or mass storage driver manipulation. My Win2000 (Old app support) box uses BusLogic, and vista x64/Windows 7 x64 use the LSI.

[kbyrd]

This is fun. Do we need a "Sage and VMware" forum?

Today I had two (seemingly unrelated) thoughts:
- I want to try ZFS for my storage.
- I want AnyDVD or something like it on my storage box.

The "storage box" is my Linux box, it's my Sage server, NAS, all around do stuff for the house box. The solution was obvious:

Install ESX and run a Solaris VM exporting the storage via NFS, run a Windows VM for AnyDVD to archive my collection, and run a Linux VM to run Sage and all the other around the house tasks that I've spent time building up around Linux.

Sometimes I want to solve everything with virtualization, I need to stop drinking the kool-aid.


Please don't suggest other ways to do what I want to do above I did actually have the "ZFS + AnyDVD + Sage = ESX of course!" thought, but this post is meant mostly as a joke.

[jpappas]

Despite the warning, I am going to post this anyway (as I posted about ZFS a while back). For Linux there is a ZFS fuse port, as well as BTRFS, plus Sage runs on OSX which has native ZFS. I have not tested either, but btrfs has been mainlined, so that may be "the future." Researching btrfs now, since I just noticed that I picked up the backported version in the repos...
jp