Mellanox Technologies
                             *********************

               OFED Driver for VMware(R) Infrastructure ESXi 5.5
                                Release Notes
                            Driver Version 2.3.3.1 EN 
                          Last Updated: September 2015
						  


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Table of Contents
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1. Overview
2. Key Features
3. Contents of Mellanox OFED ESXi
4. Supported Platforms and Operating Systems
5. Supported HCAs
6. Known Issues
   
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1. Overview
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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.

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2. Key New Features
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- RSS (Device RSS)
- VxLAn offloads (Rx/Tx)
- Device Managed Flow Steering as default steering mode (5 tuple steering)

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3. Contents of Mellanox OFED ESXi Package
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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). 

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4. Supported Platforms and Operating Systems
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 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)


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5. Supported HCAs
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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. 

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6. Known Issues
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6.1 General Known Issues
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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<VF_ID>.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<VF_ID>.maxMSIXvectors = <Number of CPUs in Win VM> + 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
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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 <mst device> 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
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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.