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vSphere with Tanzu using Intel Arc GPU

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After successfully passing through the new Intel Arc 750/770 GPU to both a Linux and Windows VM running on ESXi, which also includes keyboard/mouse access and video output to an external monitor, I wanted to see if our vSphere with Tanzu solution could also take advantage of the new Intel Arc GPU?


The answer is absolutely YES! 😀

In vSphere 7.0 Update 3 MP01 and later, vSphere with Tanzu introduced the support for adding a Dynamic DirectPath I/O device to a VM that is provisioned using the VM Service Operator. Before we can take advantage of the new Dynamic DirectPath I/O feature, we first need to create a new custom VM Class definition that maps to our Intel Arc GPU.

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Disable passthrough for specific USB devices for use with ESXi

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There was another interesting question that I saw recently asking whether you can use a USB device for an ESXi Datastore while still maintaining the ability to passthrough other USB devices to a VM? This was interesting because my understanding was that you had to choose between one of the two options because ESXi required the USB Arbitrator service to be disabled for USB storage (not officially supported by VMware) and thus disabling USB passthrough for all of your VMs.

I decided to reach out to our USB expert within VMware Engineering, Songtao, who you may know as developer for the popular USB Network Native Driver for ESXi and the Community Networking Driver for ESXi Fling for this thoughts on this question. It turns out my assumption has actually been incorrect and there is actually a way to easily exclude specific USB devices from VM passthrough which can then be used by ESXi.

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Passthrough of Integrated GPU (iGPU) for Apple Mac Mini 2018

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After successfully enabling and persisting the passthrough of the iGPU for the latest Intel NUC 10 (Frost Canyon), I thought it was worth experimenting with the Apple Mac Mini 2018 to see if the same could be accomplished with its iGPU, which is an Intel UHD 630. The biggest benefit in addition to unlocking the iGPU for general use is support for Apple's Metal API which gives developers access to the underlying GPU when building and testing MacOS and iOS applications. This is also quite timely as the Apple Mac Mini 2018 was just added to the VMware HCL!

My initial attempt failed when using the latest ESXi 6.7 Update 3 release. After enabling passthrough of the iGPU and rebooting the ESXi host for the change to take affect, the system would get stuck during boot up when loading the dma_iommu_mapper module. After speaking with Engineering, the issue is probably not related to dma_iommu_mapper module but some other module shortly after but without serial console output or ability to see terminal screen, it would be very difficult to debug the issue.

About to give up, my last attempt was try ESXi 7.0 and to my surprise the ESXi host fully booted up after enabling passthrough of the iGPU. It is still not clear on what might be causing the problem for 6.7 but at least 7.0 works!

Note: To be able to successfully power on a MacOS VM running on ESXi 7.0, ensure you have applied the recent ESXi 7.0b patch. You will need to go to the VMware Patch Portal siteto download and apply the update.

Step 1- Enable passthrough of the iGPU using the vSphere UI and then reboot for changes to take affect.

Step 2 - Navigate to Configure->Hardware->Graphics->Host Graphics and change the default graphics type to "Shared Direct"

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