MP 6,1 Disable both GPUs in 2013 Mac Pro for VMware ESXi

[evilzardoz]

Heya,

I've got a 2013 Mac Pro I am trying to run up as a VMware ESXi host. The problem is that both dGPUs (D500s) in the system are running at full power, so the idle power draw is around 117W. If I try to assign the secondary GPU to a VM via VT-D, I can get that down to around 77W.

But I can't assign the primary GPU to a VM, nor can I do direct PCI-E passthrough on it for a guest VM. When running macOS natively, idle use is around 47W. I'd expect the same, or less, with ESXi running idle.

Is there any way I can shut down the GPUs in this thing to get my power usage down?

 

[hwojtek]

Just remove them.

 

[chrfr]

Just remove them.

The built in storage is literally plugged into one of the GPUs so removing them is not really an option if one wants to use that storage.

 

[AidenShaw]

Is there any way I can shut down the GPUs in this thing to get my power usage down?

Have you asked in a VMware forum? The solution may be to blacklist the GPUs in ESXi startup.

 

[evilzardoz]

The issue with the GPUs is that EFI takes over the primary GPU at a minimum, so I can't do anything about it unless I can disable it in EFI somehow, but I'm not across the specifics of how to do that on the Mac platform. I've asked around on some VMware forums but haven't asked on the official ones yet.

I can repro the same issue on my Mac Pro 2012 systems as well - but fortunately I have greater control over what GPU I put in those - or I can them headless.

I do require internal storage - the trash can I have is optioned with a 1TB SSD which screams for VMware and is half the reason I want to use it for ESXi.

 

[mannyvel]

You might want to hunt around on the x86/linux forums. There might be a CLI you can build that can do it. Which ESXi are you running?

You'd have to search for something weird, like "disable video card hackintosh" or something like that. My guess is that you'll find it on a "linux on mac pro 6,1" thread.

 

[DearthnVader]

Heya,

I've got a 2013 Mac Pro I am trying to run up as a VMware ESXi host. The problem is that both dGPUs (D500s) in the system are running at full power, so the idle power draw is around 117W. If I try to assign the secondary GPU to a VM via VT-D, I can get that down to around 77W.

But I can't assign the primary GPU to a VM, nor can I do direct PCI-E passthrough on it for a guest VM. When running macOS natively, idle use is around 47W. I'd expect the same, or less, with ESXi running idle.

Is there any way I can shut down the GPUs in this thing to get my power usage down?

I've never used VMware ESXi, but if it uses a Linux kernel, you may have luck disabling the primary video card by adding this to your kernel boot arguments:

video=efifb:off

 

[fnwbr]

@evilzardoz Did you ever manage to figure this out? I'm running two trash cans as Proxmox hosts; and I'm interested in reducing power consumption by disabling the GPUs.