Connect PCI Devices Directly to Virtual Machines
If you're using Parallels Workstation Extreme and the host computer has an Intel VT-d chipset, you can assign the PCI Express (PCIe) devices of the host computer directly to your virtual machines.
To connect a PCIe device to a virtual machine
- Assign the device to virtual machines in the Intel VT-d pane of Parallels Workstation Preferences.
Note: You must have at least two adapters of the same type (video or network). When you assign one adapter to a virtual machine, it becomes invisible to the host operating system. The other adapter must be left to the host computer.
- Add the device to the virtual machine configuration.
- Start the virtual machine and install the manufacturer's driver for this PCIe device in the guest operating system. The driver must support the Intel VT-d technology.
Note: Parallels Workstation Extreme officially supports the NVIDIA Quadro® FX 1800, 3800, 4800, 5800, Q4000, Q5000, Q2000 and Q6000 video cards for virtual machines. For these video cards, use the latest drivers available on the manufacturer's website.
Troubleshooting
In Windows virtual machines, if the pass-through driver cannot be installed automatically after a PCIe device is assigned to virtual machines, install it manually:
- Go to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware and open the Device Manager.
- In the Device Manager, locate the appropriate PCIe device, right-click it and choose Update Driver from the context menu.
- In the Hardware Update wizard, choose to install the driver from the specific location.
- Choose to specify the driver yourself.
- In the next window, select the Have Disk option and specify the following path to the driver’s location:
C:\Program Files\Parallels\Parallels Workstation\Drivers\prl_vtdvideo.inf or C:\Program Files\Parallels\Parallels Workstation\Drivers\prl_vtdnet.inf and click Open. - Follow the wizard’s instructions to complete the installation of the driver.
- Restart the host computer.
In rare cases you cannot boot the primary Linux operating system after a PCIe device is added to the configuration of a virtual machine. To work around the issue, do the following:
- In the grub loader splash screen, with your primary operating system selected in the list, press
e on the keyboard to display the boot parameters. - Select the line starting with "
kernel " by pressing the down arrow on the keyboard. - Press
e to launch an editor for the selected line. - At the end of the line, add
init=/bin/sh
- Press Enter to return to the boot parameters screen.
- Press
b to boot the kernel. - In the command line window, mount the root partition in read-write mode by entering
mount /dev/root / -oremount,rw
Note: If you want your root partition to be mounted to a different location, replace root with this location in the command above.
- Type the following command and press Enter:
echo -n "" > /etc/parallels/vtd.hook
- Type the following command and press Enter:
mount /dev/root / -oremount,ro
- Type the following command and press Enter:
reboot
This procedure makes your primary Linux operating system boot normally.
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