Good day,
Long time ESXi user. Current setup with the issue:
Asrock Rack e3c246d4u Motherboard
Intel Xeon E-2288G processor
LSI 9211-8i HBA (passthrough)
ESXi (6.7.0 Update 3 (Build 16075168)) installed on a mirrored RAID USB drive (msata's)
The issue also occurred on my previous setup which included a E3-1275v6 processor and a supermicro board.
As for the issue--my intended (and working, most of the time) setup is to have the onboard intel igpu passed through to a VM, as well as the LSI HBA passed through to a different VM. I can enable passthrough for both of these devices, restart and they both show active. The issue is, after a few reboots, or ALWAYS if there is a hard reset (loss of power) the LSI HBA will show "disabled/needs reboot" upon startup. I have UPS's on all my machines, so the hard reset should not happen, it was done solely for troubleshooting.
So, upon starting, it will show disabled/needs reboot, which i can then click "toggle passthrough" for that device, and it will show "active" once again. at this point, i can restart, and 50% of the time it will continue to show active, or the other half of the time, it will need to be toggled and restarted again(same as the above situation).
From my troubleshooting, I can tell you that it has something to do with passing through the intel graphics. If i do not have the intel graphics passthrough enabled, this issue will come up (hard reset or regular reboots).
I am doing all of this troubleshooting after a fresh install, no VM's running, no settings modified (with the exception of the passthrough).
So, i decided to take a look at the /etc/vmware/esx.conf file after each passthrough change i made and reboot done. below highlights each step, and what the esx.conf reflected.
The below image shows what esx.conf looks like with just the intel graphics passthrough active (after the reboot to enable)
This image is right after the LSI HBA is toggled, but no reboot yet (i reboot right after taking this screenshot)
![2 - LSI toggled, before reboot.png]()
After reboot, it shows "disabled/needs reboot" in the WebUI
![3 - after reboot, shows disabled.png]()
I click toggle passthrough in the WebUI, which it then shows "Active" instead of "disabled/needs reboot". i did NOT reboot
![4 - clicked toggle passthrough, shows active.png]()
This is after it showed active, and i rebooted. both still show active
![5 - reboot after both showed active, still active after reboot.png]()
I performed a hard reset (power loss, with a 30 second delay before turning power back on) and when ESXi boots again, the LSI HBA shows "disabled/needs reboot" again (i did NOT reboot)
![7 - pending disabled after hard reset with power loss.png]()
Lastly, i toggle it back to active
![8 - toggled back to active.png]()
I vaguely remember years ago that a similar issue would occur if you added a PCI device, which would change the address of the device.
i really do not know what is going on. this is not a hardware issue that i can tell, as it happens with multiple setups.
any help is appreciated. thank you