Intel SR-IOV Explanation

Simple (hopefully) explanationof how Intel's Ethernet Controllers provide SR-IOV support in an Virtualized Environment.

This is part 2 of 2 of my overview of Intel Ethernet Virtualization Technologies - recommend you view part 1 first.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Huy .Nguyen]

Hi Patrick,

Is the Vmdq technology obsolete? I have been with Server Bios for 2 years and only see SR-IOV and Vtd ....

[Patrick Kutch]

VMDq is alive and well and supported in Windows and VMware. VMDq is a NIC + OS technology as opposed to a platform+NIC+OS technology. Which means there is no BIOS support needed and why you don't see any VMDq options in BIOS.

[jwillard99]

Everything I've read about SR-IOV is relating to providing a NIC directly to a guest VM. I was wondering, can a SR-IOV card (such as the X520) be configured instead to provide multiple virtual interfaces to the ESXi host? The Cisco vNIC (i.e., P81E) can provide logical interfaces to the hypervisor to appear as though it has a separate physical NIC (or two) for iSCSI, Service Console, VMNetwork, vMotion, etc. I'm looking for an equivalent that doesn't require Cisco UCS hardware.

[Patrick Kutch]

The short answer is that VMware has announced support for this. I believe we have some information on this up at our blog site: communities.intel.com/communit­y/wired

If there isn't anything of use to you there, post your question and I'll go dig up what I can for you.

[Patrick Kutch]

Just posted a new blog with accompanying whitepaper on how to configure QoS, such as teaming, VLANs and rate limiting with SR-IOV, up on communities.intel.com/communit­y/wired

[fisch xicht]

Without being an expert in virtualization I would argue, that PCI direct passthrough is VT-d where you can assign one PCI device to one VM. But how to share one device across many VMs with DMA? (like VLANs on one physical NIC to different VMs)

[Patrick Kutch]

Depends on how many VF's you want. Intel has some 1Gbps NICs that support 8 VF's per port. We have two 10Gbps devices that support 64 per port.

[Naman jain]

Really Helpful..!!



[Patrick Kutch]

Thank you much. It was all in PowerPoint (my boss calls me the PowerPoint Ninja). Took several months to finish it up.