I’m planning to get this Asrock IMB-X1238 motherboard, which the 4 SATA ports are controlled by the W680 chipset, which controls tons of other components (refer to the block diagram below). Does this mean that SATA passthrough to TrueNAS VM won’t work because it’s not a separate chip, like a ASMedia controller? Hypervisor will be proxmox.
Solid chance that it’d be an issue as the controller is built into the chipset - grab an HBA & toss it into the x16 slot. Or if you had plans already for the x16 slot, the diagram specifies that the slot would support x8 & x8 bifurcation - so a x16 to dual x8 riser + an HBA should fix it up for you.
…Or run TrueNAS on bear metal & use it as your hypervision. Don’t forget to blacklist the HBA if you’re going proxmox.
Proxmox forms suggest it can work, but it is unlikely & most have issues doing so
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That’s what I was afraid of 
, thanks for confirming.
I was going with an L-shapped riser but that’s for a SPF+ NIC, and unfortunately a dual x8 riser won’t fit for another HBA, as this is going in a 1U chassis. Guess I’ll have to make some compromises somewhere.
You won’t know until you see IOMMU grouping on this board.
Since this is an industrial motherboard, not a consumer one, there’s a fair chance it’s done right, with the SATA controller in its own group. The controller being part of a larger piece of silicon is irrelevant.
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As @etorix said, maybe it does support it, maybe not, and you will not know for certain until you try it yourself, find someone else who has one and can answer this question, or technical support provides you an answer (I don’t always trust tech support). You should reach out to ASRock Technical Support and ask them very specific question, one would be:
- If used to run a Type 1 Hypervisor (ESXi or Proxmox), can the SATA Controller be passed-through to the VM as a complete controller?
or something like that. Just be very specific.
Best of luck if you go down this path and please post what happens. My personal advice, have a backup plan in case it doesn’t work that way. I do not know what you are using this server for but if it was home use, my “personal” choice is to use a SATA controller card, not a high speed server RAID card flashed to IT mode. I have my reasons and since very few people like to talk about it, I will say there is a small risk the controller is not compatible with TrueNAS.
EDIT: My ASRock Rack motherboard (see my build) will not pass-through the SATA controller, it sucks. I really wanted that feature but it was not a hard core requirement, I did use a small SATA controller card for about a year and removed it due to a reconfiguration and lack of an extra x4 slot. So now I use a small SSD as a boot drive. I can’t pass through the motherboard M.2 drives either.
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Thank you for the reply. There is hope!
This isn’t for this specific Asrock motherboard, but the situation is similar. I just built an offsite backup machine with Aoostar WTR Pro barebone that came with a Ryzen 5825u (Proxmox hypervisor, TrueNAS VM). There are two SATA controllers on the SOC in different IOMMU groups. One of them can be passed through to TrueNAS and controls all 4 disk slots on the backplane, while the other SATA controller cannot be passthrough because it also contains the CPU sensors.
I’m basically confirming what you both said that it’s a hit or miss, depending on IOMMU group on specific motherboards. In case of this Ryzen motherboard, one controller worked and the other didn’t. As for the Asrock IMB-X1238 motherboard, I can only be hopeful (Asrock support wasn’t helpful), as it’s already on order.
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