why my physical network adapter not support SR-IOV

[Bab]

Dear all

Hi

i have a question about SR I/OV please see attach pic i have 2 physical adapter on my hp server and for both of them show SR_IOV status = not supported

now i want to know realy my network adapter not support this feature or i have to enable this feature ????

BR

[pwolf]

That depends on your adapters and your server hardware. And yes, even if both support SR-IOV you may need to enable that in the BIOS of your server, too (if it was not enabled before).

[Bab]

so thanks

but which option do i have to enable in BIOS server for enable SR-IOV ??

BR

[Bab]

please see attach pic i have enabled SRIOV on server bios but in vcenter when select physical adapter in SRIOv support show unsupported

what is problem??

BR

[pwolf]

Most likely your NIC. Only very few 1 GB NICs suport SR-IOV. And there are several 10GB NICs, which do not support SR-IOV, too.

[Bab]

is your means that a limit number of 1G nic support SR-IOV ???

[pwolf]

Yes, only a very limited number of 1 GB NICs do support SR-IOV.

But in my opinion, that is no big issue as with 1 GB NICs I try to give each VM one dedicated NIC and that you can achieve with PCI-passthrough quite well.

With 10 GB NICs, that's a little bit different and there SR-IOV is an almost perfect solution as long as you do not need the full 10 GB bandwidth for one machine.

[bhards4]

Hi

SR-IOV is disabled by default on ESXi 5.1 & 5.5.

To enable SR-IOV, use the esxcli command or host profiles in 5.1. In vSphere 5.5, it can be done through the vSphere Web Client also.

Note: For SR-IOV to function, physical hosts must meet these requirements.

1 Supported Processor: Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi

2) Motherboard firmware support for Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi

3) IOMMU is enabled in the BIOS/UEFI

4)LACP is currently unsupported with SR-IOV

To enable SR-IOV on a Physical Adapter using the esxcli command in ESXi 5.1 or 5.5:

Take SSH of the ESXi host and run below command

esxcli system module parameters set -m NIC_Driver_Module -p "max_vfs=n"

Where:

NIC_Driver_Module is the module name of the NIC which is SR-IOV capable (for example, ixgbe)

n is the number of virtual functions (VFs) provided by the NIC (for example, 8)

For example, to configure for an Intel X540 10 GB Ethernet Adapter, run the command:

esxcli system module parameters set -m ixgbe -p "max_vfs=8"

Reboot the host to reload the driver with the configured parameters.

==============================================

To enable the SR-IOV on a Host Physical Adapter in the vSphere Web Client in the ESXi 5.5 :

In the vSphere Web Client, navigate to the Host.

In the Manage > Networking tab, select Physical adapters, you can see the SR-IOV property to check whether a physical adapter supports SR-IOV.

Select the physical adapter and click Edit Settings.

Under SR-IOV, select Enabled from the Status dropdown.

In the Number of virtual functions text box, type the number of virtual functions that you want to configure for the adapter.

Click OK.

Restart the host.

-Sachin

[Bab]

thanks

but i have a few questions :

1- SR-IOV is enabled by default on ESXi 6.0 & 6.5 ???

2 - my physical adapter model is :

Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5719 Gigabit Ethernet

here my NIC_Driver_Module is : NetXtreme ?

3 - what does your means from number of virtual functions (VFs) provided by the NIC ?

4 - how can understand count of function that my NIC can provide ??

BR

[pwolf]

Your adapter most probably is a HP 331T adapter as your server is a HP server. This adapter does not support SR-IOV.

[bhards4]

Hi,

Please find your query in below document.

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/reference-guides/sr-iov-guide-ethernet-cna-x710-xl710-vmwar…

-Sachin

[Bab]

so thanks

but in previous post i defined my pnic adapter is broadcom and is not intell now how can understand my network adapter can support sriov or do i have to enable that or not?

BR