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GPU passthrough with ESXi on the Apple 2019 Mac Pro 7,1

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The expandability of the Apple 2019 Mac Pro (7,1) has been the primary reason VMware customers have been so excited for this new platform for virtualizing macOS on ESXi. The most common request that I hear from customers is for GPU passthrough.

Although VMware does not officially support GPU passthrough, even for the existing Apple hardware systems on the VMware HCL, this has been a topic I have been keeping an eye out on, especially from what the VMware community is doing in this space.

My intention for this blog post is to provide a resource for the community on capturing the success and failures when attempting GPU passthrough on a 2019 Mac Pro. For those interested and have capable hardware, you may want to start with the VMware HCL for GPU passthrough devices listed under Virtual Dedicated Graphics Acceleration (vDGA). This may be your best chance to successfully passthrough a GPU that will be recognized by either a macOS or Linux/Windows guest operating system.

If you would like to share your experiences, feel free to leave a comment or reach out by filling the contact form.

Disclaimer: Although ESXi installs and runs on the Apple 2019 Mac Pro 7,1 it is currently not certified on the VMware HCL. There are no timelines on the certification due to challenges with COVID-19.

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Virtually Speaking Podcast: MacOS Virtualization and MacStadium

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Last week I had the pleasure to be on the Virtually Speaking Podcast (#1 Virtualization Podcast) to talk a little about the history and the use cases driving MacOS Virtualization in the Enterprise. In fact, this affects most if not every single organization that develops either an Apple MacOS and/or iOS application which includes VMware.

We also had a very special guest, Preston Lasebikan, a Systems Architect for MacStadium who gave us some insights into how they are supporting major Enterprise customers such as Dropbox, Capital One, Shopify, Box and many others using their Apple Mac Infrastructure which runs on VMware vSphere. If you never heard of MacStadium before, they are the largest service provider of Apple Mac Infrastructure as a Service in the world and there is a high probability your organization is already using them with you even knowing.

Click on the image below to listen 👇

Update on ESXi on Apple Mac Mini 2018 & Mac Pro 2019

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Although there has not been any news in some time regarding the support for ESXi on the latest Apple Mac Mini 2018 and the recently released Apple Mac Pro 2019, there has definitely been work happening behind the scenes at VMware. Today, I would like to share a pretty significant update as a result of some of these efforts.

MacOS Guest

One of the biggest issue which I had observed when using a T2-based Apple system with ESXi is that it would fail to boot a MacOS Guest and just keep rebooting the VM. I am very happy to announce that this issue has been resolved and ESXi can now properly recognize the Apple System Management Controller (SMC) device which is used as part of the MacOS Guest start up process. This now means a MacOS Guest will be able to properly boot on a T2-based Apple system.

Thunderbolt 3

Another impact of a T2-based Apple system with ESXi is that storage and networking devices connected to the Thunderbolt 3 ports are not visible. I am also happy to announce that this issue has been resolved and ESXi can now see PCIe devices that are attached to the Thunderbolt 3 ports.

An ESXi Advanced Setting change is required for Thunderbolt 3 to work correctly and the following command will need to be executed after installing ESXi:

esxcli system settings kernel set -s pciExperimentalFlags -v 16

Once the setting has been applied, a system reboot will be required and your PCIe devices will show up properly. In future, this additional configuration may not be required and can be detected based on the underlying hardware.

Both of the fixes mentioned above are included in the latest ESXi 6.7 Patch 02 (ESXi670-202004002) release which is available today! Hopefully this was the news that many of you have been waiting for 😀

UPDATE (09/02/21) - Per this official blog post, VMware will no longer pursue hardware certification for the Apple 2019 Mac Pro 7,1 for ESXi.

UPDATE (02/23/21) - The Community NVMe Driver for ESXi Fling now enables access to the local Apple NVMe device.

UPDATE (08/27/20) - The Apple 2018 Mac Mini 8,1 is now officially supported with ESXi 6.7 Update 3 which requires the latest ESXi 6.7 Patch 03 which also incorporates automatically setting the ESXi Advanced Setting for Thunderbolt 3 access.

UPDATE (06/25/20) - The Apple 2018 Mac Mini 8,1 is now officially on the VMware HCL and is fully supported with ESXi 7.0b, which contains the fixes mentioned above. See note below on 06/23 for more information.

UPDATE (06/23/20) - ESXi 7.0b has just been released and contains fixes for both the MacOS guest boot issue support for Thunderbolt 3 devices which now enables support for the vSphere 7 release. One additional enhancement, customers no longer need to configure the ESXi Advanced Setting to enable Thunderbolt 3 support, this is now automatically configured based on detecting an Apple hardware system such as an Apple Mac Mini 2018 or Apple Mac Pro 2019. This is a patch release and you will need to go to the VMware Patch Portal site to download and apply the update.

Now, before you rush out to start deploying MacOS Guests on either the Mac Mini or Mac Pro, I do have to mention that neither the Mac Mini 2018 or the Mac Pro 2019 will be officially supported by VMware. Due to the current situation that we are all in with COVID-19, personnel access to VMware facilities like many other organizations has been severely restricted and/or prohibited. In fact, much of the early validation was done by yours truly using a Mac Mini 2018 which I had access to (Thanks Michael Roy) as Engineering did not have access to hardware during the shelter in place orders. This also means that certifications of these platforms is still on-going and until these systems are officially listed on VMware's HCL, they will not be officially supported by VMware.

Disclaimer: VMware currently does not officially support the Apple 2019 Mac Pro7,1

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