Decided to remove my physical HTPC (old and power hungry) and try to virtualize it in my homelab. This will give me a change to play with passthrough mode.
Host Configuration
ESXI03:
- AMD HD6570 (VM Passthrough Device)
- Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT (Host GPU)
- Logitech diNovo Mini (VM USB Passthrough)
To begin I need to passthrough the AMD HD6570 and USB EHCI #2 (diNovo USB dongle). From the web client Select ESXI03 -> Click Manage tab -> Settings -> Hardware -> PCI Devices -> Click Pencil (edit) -> Select devices -> Reboot ESXI03:
VM Configuration
- Add PCI devices
- Memory Reservation
When passing through devices to a virtual machine vSphere will reserve all the guest’s memory. Everything appeared to be going well until I went to apply the configuration. I would get error 0x-73d3 or 0x-5570 depending on the order I selected:
Workaround
Attach the PCI devices to the VM using the C# client instead of the web client:
Now I can remove the old physical HTPC and enjoy HD content from my virtual machine.
