User Manual

Rev 4.70
Mellanox Technologies
72
Figure 16: Virtual Function in the VM
8.11 Virtual Ethernet Adapter
The Virtual Ethernet Adapter (VEA) provides a mechanism enabling multiple ethernet adapters
on the same physical port. Each of these multiple adapters is referred to as a virtual ethernet
adapter (VEA).
At present, one can have a total of two VEAs per port. The first VEA, normally the only adapter
for the physical port, is referred to as a “physical VEA.” The second VEA, if present, is called a
“virtual VEA”. currently only a single "Virtual VEA" is supported. The difference between a vir-
tual and a physical VEA is that RDMA is only available through the physical VEA. In addition,
certain settings for the port can only be configured on the physical VEA (see Figure 8.11.2 on
page 73).
The user can manage VEAs using the "vea_man" tool. vea_man set of commands allows you to
add or remove a VEA, or query the existing Mellanox ethernet adapters and see which are virtual
and which are physical.
8.11.1 System Requirements
• Operating System: Windows 2012 and Windows 2012 R2
To achieve best performance on SR-IOV VF, please run the following powershell com-
mands on the host:
For 10Gbe:
Set-VMNetworkAdapter -Name "Network Adapter" -VMName vm1 -IovQueue-
PairsRequested 4
For 40Gbe:
Set-VMNetworkAdapter -Name "Network Adapter" -VMName vm1 -IovQueue-
PairsRequested 8