Enabling sr-iov in esxi 5.1 and 5.5 – Dell Emulex Family of Adapters User Manual
Page 998
Emulex Drivers Version 10.2 for VMware ESXi User Manual
P010087-01A Rev. A
2. Installation
Installing the NIC Driver
998
All vNICs are fully functional and support the same capabilities as a standard NIC. The
vNICs can also be linked to a virtual switch in the same way:
# esxcfg-nics -l //list recognized nics
# esxcfg-vswitch -l //list available vswitches
# esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch0 //create vSwitch0
# esxcfg-vswitch -A VMNet0 vSwitch0 //create virtual machine
network, VMNet0 and add it to vSwitch0
# esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic0 vSwitch0 //link vmnic0 to vSwitch0
The only difference being that in vNIC mode, each of the four vNICs tied to a physical
port shares the port’s 10GbE bandwidth.
Enabling SR-IOV in ESXi 5.1 and 5.5
SR-IOV capability can be enabled for OneConnect OCe11100-series, OCe14000-series,
and LPe16202/OCe15100 adapters in ESXi 5.1 and 5.5 if your system BIOS supports
SR-IOV.
Note: SR-IOV cannot be enabled with other multichannel technologies like UMC or
vNIC.
To enable SR-IOV:
1. Enable IOV capability in the system BIOS. Press
2. Enable SR-IOV for each port of the adapter from the BIOS.
3. If you want to use a newer driver, install the driver VIB after booting the ESXi host.
4. To load the Ethernet driver with options to enable SR-IOV, run one of the following
commands:
ESXi 5.1
# esxcfg-module -s max_vfs=x,y be2net
ESXi 5.5
# esxcfg-module -s max_vfs=x,y elxnet
- Or -
# esxcli system module parameters set -p "max_vfs=x,y" -m elxnet
where “x” and “y” are the number of VFs to be enabled on each of the two NIC PFs.
A value of 0 indicates that there are no VFs for the corresponding PF.
Note: The driver currently supports a maximum of 30 VFs per PF for the
OCe11100-series adapters, 32 VFs per PF for the LPe16202/OCe15100
adapters, 32 VFs per PF for the OCe14100-series adapters, and 63 VFs per PF
for the OCe14400-series adapters.
Note: HP Virtual Connect adapters support a maximum of 24 VFs per PF.
For multiple adapters, use one of the following command:
ESXi 5.1