Mellanox Technologies ********************* OFED Driver for VMware(R) Infrastructure ESXi 5.5 Release Notes Driver Version 2.3.3.1 EN Last Updated: September 2015 =============================================================================== Table of Contents =============================================================================== 1. Overview 2. Key Features 3. Contents of Mellanox OFED ESXi 4. Supported Platforms and Operating Systems 5. Supported HCAs 6. Known Issues =============================================================================== 1. Overview =============================================================================== These are the release notes of "OFED Driver for VMware(R) vSphere 5.5". This document provides instructions on drivers for Mellanox Technologies ConnectX(R) based adapter cards with VMware ESXi Server environment. =============================================================================== 2. Key New Features =============================================================================== - RSS (Device RSS) - VxLAn offloads (Rx/Tx) - Device Managed Flow Steering as default steering mode (5 tuple steering) =============================================================================== 3. Contents of Mellanox OFED ESXi Package =============================================================================== MLNX-OFED-ESX package contains: o MLNX-OFED-ESX-2 3 3 1-10EM-550 0 0 1331820.zip - Hypervisor bundle which contains the following kernel modules: - mlx_compat(Mellanox Technologies compatibility layer) - mlx4_core (ConnectX family low-level PCI driver) - mlx4_en (Mellanox Technologies Ethernet driver) The driver package is distributed as an offline bundle (.zip file). =============================================================================== 4. Supported Platforms and Operating Systems =============================================================================== o CPU architectures: - x86_64 o ESX Hypervisor: - ESXi 5.5UX o SR-IOV Virtual Machine Drivers: - MLNX_OFED 2.4-1.0.0 (SR-IOV Ethernet) =============================================================================== 5. Supported HCAs =============================================================================== This release supports Mellanox Technologies Ethernet NICs: - ConnectX-3 Pro: 2.35.5100 - ConnectX-3: 2.35.5100 Please note that older firmware versions were not tested with this release. =============================================================================== 6. Known Issues =============================================================================== 6.1 General Known Issues ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- o Unloading the driver is not supported by VMware. o After changing module parameters values, reboot is required. o Port type auto-sense is not supported. VPI cards' default port type is IB therefore, to set the port type to ETh you must set the port_type_array to 2. For further information, please refer to the User Manual section "Setting Up SR-IOV" o SR-IOV passthru network adapter is not supported o VMs with SRIOV interface might not power on with "out of MSI-X vectors" message in vmkernel.log. To resolve this issue, need to add pciPassthru.maxMSIXvectors parameter to VMs configuration file. Maximum value allowed for this param is 31. We suggest to set the value according to the following equation: pciPassthru.maxMSIXvectors = + 2 For additional explanation refer to: http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.networking.doc%2FGUID-880A9270-807F-4F2A-B443-71FF01DCC61D.html 6.2. Ethernet Known Issues ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- o The maximum supported VFs in SR-IOV EN is 32. Number of adapters on a server with SR-IOV EN can be calculated as follow: (4 + min(number_of_cores, 16)*2 + number_of_vfs*3)*number_of_mellanox_adapters <= 128 o Maximum number of PV interfaces (each with different MAC): 126 - (number_of_vfs*2) o SR-IOV EN can be enabled on Ethernet cards only. To set HCA as ETH use mlxconfig: mlxconfig -d set LINK_TYPE_P1=2 LINK_TYPE_P2=2 o Changing the ring size via ethtool or mlnx_en module parameters is currently not supported. o Windows guest over SR-IOV EN is not supported o Changing default VLAN during background traffic might cause traffic loss. o Setting 'mac' load balancing failover is not supported with multicast traffic. 6.3 RoCE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- o RoCEv2 is currently not supported. o RoCE can be configured and run only on Virtual Machines which are associated with SR-IOV EN Virtual Functions.