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Kobe14
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Any Quad pcie nic that works for passthrough?

Mon Aug 10, 2020 1:59 am

I'm in process of migrating my x86 machine to CHR under hyper-v. I chose quad nic RTL8111g because from my previous experience routeros has issues with intel based pcie-nic

But i stumbled into an issue.
I passthrough'ed my quad nic RTL8111g, and i'm pretty sure i did it correctly cause it didn't show any error.
But my CHR VM isn't detecting them,
tried ROS x86 VM but it's the same.
Is there any quad nic card that is officially supported by ROS for VM passthrough?
Googled a bit but i can't find anything.

Pfsense could do this, but i read it has performance issues.
I'd rather not use onboard nic, if it's broken it means replacing the whole board.
 
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Hominidae
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Re: Any Quad pcie nic that works for passthrough?

Mon Aug 10, 2020 10:38 pm

I wouldn*t limit the problem to the chipset of the NIC.
I am using an i350AT-Quad...this one from Fujitsu https://sp.ts.fujitsu.com/dmsp/Publicat ... 045-Cu.pdf

However your mileage my vary, depending of Hypervisor and type of passthrough/virtualisation options used.
As I am using a KVM based system, my experience is that using an EFI based virtual BIOS and emulated higher level chipset would not work, while a standard BIOS and simple PC chipset works every time.
 
Kobe14
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Re: Any Quad pcie nic that works for passthrough?

Tue Aug 11, 2020 12:39 am

I wouldn*t limit the problem to the chipset of the NIC.
I am using an i350AT-Quad...this one from Fujitsu https://sp.ts.fujitsu.com/dmsp/Publicat ... 045-Cu.pdf

However your mileage my vary, depending of Hypervisor and type of passthrough/virtualisation options used.
As I am using a KVM based system, my experience is that using an EFI based virtual BIOS and emulated higher level chipset would not work, while a standard BIOS and simple PC chipset works every time.
Thanks for the reply, so you got it to work under proxmox i presume?
Interesting that intel based chip works, i used to have issues detecting intel pcie nic on x86.
Unfortunately with my build im forced to use windows server as the host. And i'm out of pcie lanes to use i350 (x4), and AFAIK only realtek makes quad based nic with x1 pcie lanes.
I havent messed with the bios of the card yet, will check it, but i think the default shouldnt be EFI.
 
Kobe14
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Re: Any Quad pcie nic that works for passthrough?

Tue Aug 11, 2020 11:52 am

Hmm this is strange, just tested it again with pcie nic tp link tg3468, which is also realtek based.
I'm using 13 of these for my x86 machine (with mining board it's possible), and they've been working flawlessly for 2-3 years now

Survey script says it's assignable, and the default MMIO for hyper-v vm (128mb) should be sufficient :
TP-Link Gigabit PCI Express Adapter
Express Endpoint -- more secure.
And its interrupts are message-based, assignment can work.
And it requires at least: 2 MB of MMIO gap space
PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1C02)#PCI(0000)
Then i mount it:
PS C:\Users\Administrator> Dismount-VMHostAssignableDevice -LocationPath "PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1C02)#PCI(0000)" -force
PS C:\Users\Administrator> Add-VMAssignableDevice -LocationPath "PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1C02)#PCI(0000)" -VMName "Mikrotik"
It doesn't throw any errors
but CHR doesn't detect it,
so either CHR has different set of drivers with x86,
or i'm doing something wrong with the passthrough,
if it's the latter i can't think of anything else.

Any thoughts from mikrotik team?
I bought x86 license before, and if it's necessary to get support i can provide it.

I'm getting some intel-based cards tomorrow, gonna test it and report back
 
Kobe14
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Re: Any Quad pcie nic that works for passthrough?

Thu Aug 13, 2020 3:42 am

Update : I got a quad NIC based on intel 85275 to work, through esxi.
But it's chinese made and oddly its x1
The previous realtek nic that i mentioned doesnt work though,
I havent tested it for VLAN and high traffic yet though
 
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Hominidae
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Re: Any Quad pcie nic that works for passthrough?

Thu Aug 13, 2020 10:02 pm

Most new china clones are fakes, as far as my personal experience is concerned.

And I agree, using a quad-NIC in x1 means stretching it far....you can get a real i350AT Quad, like the one I am using, like "dirt cheap", pulled from an server via a respectable reseller at "the bay".
I choose this one as it comes in low-profile per default.
Maybe it is worth a try without risking too much money.

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