VMWARE vmxnet3 device driver plugin

Overview

This plugin provides native PCI driver support for VMWare vmxnet3.

Prerequisites

• This code is tested with vfio-pci driver installed with Ubuntu 18.04 which has kernel version 4.15.0-33-generic.
• This code is tested with ESXi vSwitch version 6.0, release build 3620759.
• Driver requires MSI-X interrupt support, which is not supported by uio_pci_generic driver, so vfio-pci needs to be used. On systems without IOMMU vfio driver can still be used with recent kernels which support no-iommu mode.

Known issues

• TSO/LRO
• RSS/multiple queues
• VLAN filter

Usage

System setup

1. load VFIO driver

   sudo modprobe vfio-pci

2. (systems without IOMMU only) enable unsafe NOIOMMU mode

   echo Y | sudo tee /sys/module/vfio/parameters/enable_unsafe_noiommu_mode

3. Bind interface to vfio-pci

   sudo dpdk-devbind.py --bind vfio-pci 0b:00.0

Interface Creation

Interface can be dynamically created with following CLI:

create interface vmxnet3 0000:0b:00.0
set int state vmxnet3-0/b/0/0 up

Interface Deletion

Interface can be deleted with following CLI:

delete interface vmxnet3 <if-name>

Interface Statistics

Interface statistics can be displayed with show hardware-interface <if-name> command.

Show Interface CLI

Interface and ring information can be obtained with show vmxnet3 [if-name] [desc]