So some time ago I ran out of my VMs RAID1 array performance and I decided to upgrade it to 4x nvme RAID10. Since I also had two Samsungs 990 PRO 2TB with other data on my ASUS Hyper M.2 carrier board I ended up with 2 spare drives, being unable to connect them to workstation in any reasonable way.
I had M.2 USB controller though connected to U.2 on motherboard. AND I heard about OWC Shuttle U.2 nvme enclosure that contains pci-e gen 3 switch x4 → 4x x2. It was supposed to be quite janky because I’m passing through this USB controller to VMs and I was pretty sure there’s no way I’ll be able to do that without passing through SSD’s as well if I were to put them in that OWC Shuttle but…
Turns out I was wrong.
IOMMU Group 38:
ce:04.0 PCI bridge [0604]: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM2824 PCIe Gen3 Packet Switch [1b21:2824] (rev 01)
d2:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VL805/806 xHCI USB 3.0 Controller [1106:3483] (rev 01)
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IOMMU Group 41:
ce:08.0 PCI bridge [0604]: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM2824 PCIe Gen3 Packet Switch [1b21:2824] (rev 01)
d5:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller [0108]: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller S4LV008[Pascal] [144d:a80c]
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IOMMU Group 44:
ce:0c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM2824 PCIe Gen3 Packet Switch [1b21:2824] (rev 01)
d8:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller [0108]: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller S4LV008[Pascal] [144d:a80c]
This enclosure does somehow work quite well with IOMMU and I’m totally able to passthrough individual drives and USB to different VMs which is absolutely mad! I’m mostly writing about it since OWC Shuttle is commonly frowned upon here due to its gimped gen 3 x2 connection per drive, but come on - if it works with IOMMU, it opens up endless possibilities just by doing that!
Whole setup is jank as hell but it works and it’s absolutley great. I couldn’t recommend this thing more. It plows.