User Manual

Table Of Contents

Rev 1.4.1-

Mellanox Techologies

1 Mellanox InfiniBand OFED Driver for VMware®

vSphere Overview

1.1 Introduction to Mellanox InfiniBand OFED for VMware

Mellanox OFED is a single Virtual Protocol Internconnect (VPI) software stack based on the

OpenFabrics (OFED) Linux stack adapted for VMware, and operates across all Mellanox network

adapter solutions supporting 10, 20 and 40Gb/s InfiniBand (IB); 10Gb/s Ethernet (10GigE); and

2.5 or 5.0 GT/s PCI Express 2.0 uplinks to servers.

All Mellanox network adapter cards are compatible with Op

enFabrics-based RDMA protocols and

software, and are supported with major operating system distributions.

1.2 Introduction to Mellanox VPI Adapters

Mellanox VPI adapters, which are based on Mellanox ConnectX® and ConnectX®-2 adapter

devices, provide leading server and storage I/O performance with flexibility to support the myriad

of communication protocols and network fabrics over a single device, without sacrificing func-

tionality when consolidating I/O. For example, VPI-enabled adapters can support:

y Connectivity to 10, 20 and 40Gb/s InfiniBand switches, Ethernet switches, emerging

Data Center Ethernet switches and InfiniBand to Ethernet

y A single firmware image for dual-port ConnectX/ConnectX-2 adapters that supports

independent access to different convergence networks (InfiniBand, Ethernet or Data

Center Ethernet) per port

y A unified application programming interface with access to communication protocols

including: Networking (TCP, IP, UDP, sockets), Storage (NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, SRP and

Clustered Storage), Clustering (MPI, DAPL, RDS, sockets), and Management (SNMP,

SMI-S)

y Communication protocol acceleration engines including: networking, storage, cluster-

ing, virtualization and RDMA with

enhanced quality of service

1.3 Mellanox OFED Package

1.3.1 Software Components

MLNX_OFED_VMware contains the following software components:

y Mellanox Host Channel Adapter Drivers

 mlx4 (VPI), which is split into multiple modules:

 ib_basic (low level IB helper)

 mlx4_en (Ethernet)

Mid-layer core

 Verbs, MADs, SA, CM, CMA, uVerbs, uMADs

Upper Layer Protocols (ULPs)

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