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 driver is tested with ESXi vSwitch version 6.5/6.7 for LRO/TSO support, VMware Workstation 15 Pro (no LRO/TSO), and VMware Fusion 11 Pro (no LRO/TSO)
• Driver requires MSI-X interrupt support, which is not supported by uio_pci_generic driver. So vfio-pci must be used. On systems without IOMMU, vfio driver can still be used with 4.15.0-33-generic kernel (Ubuntu 18.04) which supports no-iommu mode.

Known issues

• VLAN filter

Usage

System setup

1. load VFIO driver

   sudo modprobe vfio-pci

2. Make sure the interface is down

   sudo ifconfig <if-name> down

Steps 3 and 4 are optional. They can be accomplished by specifying the optional keyword "bind" when creating the vmxnet3 interface.

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

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

2. 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, with or without the bind option. If step 3 and 4 were executed, bind can be omitted.

create interface vmxnet3 0000:0b:00.0 bind
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]