Legacy BIOS and AMD-Vi?

[Paul616]

Hello!

I'm very interested in the fitlet-X-LAN Barebone model, and I've got a couple of questions I hope someone can answer.

Does the firmware support booting in legacy BIOS mode, or just UEFI?

Does the CPU/chipset/firmware support AMD-Vi (also known as IOMMU or Intel VT-d)?

I'd like to turn this machine into a tiny host for some low-powered virtual machines. Thanks in advance!

[mbirger]

1. Both UEFI and Legacy boot modes are supported.
2. IOMMU is supported, but not tested yet.

[Paul616]

Thank you! I look forward to trying it out once the machines are back in stock.

[Anyfer_Development]

Hi Paul616,

did you have the time to test virtualization with the fitlet-X-LAN Barebone model? Any test results you could share?

[Anyfer_Development]

Hi Paul616 and mbirger,

do you have any news about any tests made with IOMMU?

[mbirger]

IOMMU wasn't tested. Anyway, before using IOMMU has to be enabled in BIOS: Advanced -> CPU settings -> IOMMU Mode

[zelogik]

Hi

New user of a xa10-lan, PCI passthrough working very well with xenserver.
So it's mean that iommu working. But for the moment i don't have the time to test performance.

[Paul616]

I do have news, and it is good, if late! PCI passthrough works perfectly under ESXi 6.0. All four Ethernet ports on my Fitlet-X are available for passthrough.

The UEFI has a "legacy" mode which allows non-UEFI-aware OSes to be installed. ESXi did require modification before the NICs were detected--otherwise installation halts. Check out http://www.v-front.de for instructions on how to do that, if anyone is interested. That guy is awesome.

On a side note, the Fitlet gets so hot, even at idle, that touching it is painful, so I bought the bigger heatsink for it. Much more reassuring!