Adaptec ASC-1045, Passthrough, PSOD

[spaceinvader]

Never ending story - and fiddeling with unstable machine...

As of SAS LTO-3 tape drive isn't working reliably with used drivers I've to test other solutions.

Due to lack of support of the Adaptec ASC-1045 SAS non-RAID controller (4 external SAS channels), I've to test VMware Passthrough.

(ESXi 4.0 Update 1)

After install of Adaptec x64 Driver 5.0.1.0 on the Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64) guest sometimes I get PSODs, unfortunately. This behavior is discussed here and at Symantec for ESX(i) 3.5, already.

I fiddled controller "recognizing" into simple.map and pci.ids (PCI ID of the ASC-1045 is 9005 0450), lspci shows up the controller as vmhba2, but it will not be recognized by vmware. (Of course: I don't know if the tested driver adp94xx.o or aic79xx.o are able to drive this controller.)

[spaceinvader]

Correction:

At Symantec there are discussed PSODs with "SCSI Passthrough" at ESX(i) 3.5 (which were work-arounded by patches from VMware, meanwhile), not PSODs with "PCI Passthrough/VMDirectPath".

So I've separate problems with PSODs with PCI Passthrough / VMDirectPath and Adaptec ASC-1045 SAS controller.

But by the way: There could be a similar reason for PSODs:

ESX host may encounter a crash when a tape drive or library is shared to a guest virtual machine using SCSI Pass Through.

Addition:

With ASC-1045 (in PCI passthrough mode) the guest is running without issues. When I plug-in the external SAS tape drive during running guest (and host, of course) the host brings up a PSOD.

If the tape drive is connected and switched on already when I'm starting the guest, the hosts PSOD takes place when I'm trying to access the tape drive (i.e. with a job from BE) in a more intense way (real jobs, not only ejecting or putting to inventory).

[spaceinvader]

Got an info form Adaptec support:

Sadly (most better: pitfully) there are no plans to add support for ESX for Adaptecs series 1 controllers.

(If VMware don't want to add tape drive support for locally attached tape drives, it wouldn't be necessary, at all. (And nobody want to support low cost controllers. ))

I'm disappointed by VMwares solutions. They forced me to look for other vendors / virtualisation solutions.

[DSTAVERT]

There are far too many other far better solutions for backup that aren't tied to a locally attached tape. http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10780

If you need tape by all means move it to a physical device and use your backup tools.

[spaceinvader]

Hi DSTAVERT!

I'm not interested in backing up ESXi or VMFS! I want to use a locally attached SAS LTO-3 tape drive from within a guest.

Simply using virtualized host hardware. (Or, if necessary, hardware which is passed through.)

Why "need tape by all means"? What solutions do you would prefer?

Moving tape drive to a physical device!? What a strong idea... Next tip: Simply move myself to another city... Or screw a potato to one of my leg.

I'm loving such clever pieces of advice...

[secon]

Hi!

anything new about that?

did you finaly get it to work?

If got the same issue here. Adaptec 1405 & PSOD while access Tape Drive...