Users Guide

Table Of Contents
Doc No. BC0054508-00 Rev. R
January 21, 2021 Page 246 Copyright © 2021 Marvell
16 SR-IOV
This chapter provides information about single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV):
Overview
Enabling SR-IOV
“Verifying that SR-IOV is Operational” on page 250
“SR-IOV and Storage Functionality” on page 250
“SR-IOV and Jumbo Packets” on page 251
Overview
Virtualization of network controllers allows users to consolidate their networking
hardware resources and run multiple virtual machines concurrently on
consolidated hardware. Virtualization also provides the user a rich set of features
such as I/O sharing, consolidation, isolation and migration, and simplified
management with provisions for teaming and failover.
Virtualization can come at the cost of reduced performance due to hypervisor
overhead. The PCI-SIG introduced the SR-IOV specification to address these
performance issues by creating a virtual function (VF), a lightweight PCIe function
that can be directly assigned to a virtual machine (VM), bypassing the hypervisor
layer for the main data movement.
Not all Marvell adapters support SR-IOV; refer to your product documentation for
details.
See the VMware documentation for enabling SR-IOV on a pNIC at the
hypervisor/driver level.