VGA Passthrough on HP ML110 G7 with HD5450 and HD6850.

First read this if you haven’t got Esxi all ready to go.

If you have everything ready to go, the first lets get some results.

The HD5450 works on Win7 and Ubuntu, the HDMI Video works on both OS’s but the HDMI Audio doesn’t work on any (at least I couldn’t get it to work) and I looked everywhere.

The HD6850 works flawlessly with both OS’s and Audio is working, although a bit jerky on Win7, I had to get the motherboard out of the HP server because the HD6850 has a double socket bracket and the PCIe socket on the ML110 G7 is in the last slot right next to the bottom of the case. I only did it because that’s the card I use on my Desktop and I wanted to check if everything worked with a different card.

For Windows all you need to do is install Windows7, install the VMware Tools, reboot (Probably a good idea to make a snapshot now) passthrough the Card and the HDMI Audio, boot onto windows and install the drivers, easy as cake, this is for both Cards.

On Ubuntu things get a little bit different but still pretty simple. Install Ubuntu, install the VMware Tools, reboot and take a snapshot if you like.

After that’s done, passthrough the HDMI Card and HDMI Audio, this is where things get a bit different for the HD5450 If you passthrough the HDMI Audio you will be Stuck at the Ubuntu loading screen. so for the HD5450 only passthrough the HDMI Video Card.

Once that’s done, boot onto Ubuntu and on the left bar select “System Settings” on the bottom of the new Window select “Software Sources” and on this window select the tab “Additional Drivers”

In here Select “Using Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators from fglrx (proprietary)

After the installation is finished open a terminal window and type

sudo aticonfig --initial -f

reboot the system and you should now have VGA passthrough with Ubuntu 12.10.

Just remember, on the HD5450 passthrough only the Video Device on not the Audio.

Now later after investigating a bit more I found out how to passthrough both the HDMI Video and the HDMI Audio with the HD5450, but I still got no sound.

All you have to do is to open a terminal window and type.

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and add the line

options snd-hda-intel disable_msi=1

to the file, to save and exit type “Ctrl+X” “Y” “Enter”.

After I found this I tried getting the sound to work but it never shows up on sound output a aplay -l always shows “no soundcards installed”

So I am off to buy an HD6450 that can be had for £30 brand new with a single bracket and I will update on my success, until then Happy Virtualization.