6.5.1

Table Of Contents
2 Assign a Virtual Function as SR-IOV Passthrough Adapter to a Virtual Machine
To ensure that a virtual machine and a physical NIC can exchange data, you must associate the
virtual machine with one or more virtual functions as SR-IOV passthrough network adapters.
The traffic passes from an SR-IOV passthrough adapter to the physical adapter in compliance with the
active policy on the associated port on the standard or distributed switch.
To examine which virtual function is assigned to an SR-IOV passthrough network adapter, on the
Summary tab for the virtual machine expand the VM Hardware panel and check the properties of the
adapter.
The topology diagram of the switch marks virtual machine adapters that use virtual functions with the
icon.
What to do next
Set up the traffic passing through the virtual functions attached to the virtual machine by using the
networking policies on the switch, port group, and port. See Networking Options for the Traffic Related to
an SR-IOV Enabled Virtual Machine.
Enable SR-IOV on a Host Physical Adapter
Before you can connect virtual machines to virtual functions, use the vSphere Web Client to enable SR-
IOV and set the number of virtual functions on your host.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Web Client, navigate to the host.
2 On the Configure tab, expand Networking and select Physical adapters.
You can look at the SR-IOV property to see whether a physical adapter supports SR-IOV.
3 Select the physical adapter and click Edit adapter settings.
4 Under SR-IOV, select Enabled from the Status drop-down menu.
5 In the Number of virtual functions text box, type the number of virtual functions that you want to
configure for the adapter.
6 Click OK.
7 Restart the host.
The virtual functions become active on the NIC port represented by the physical adapter entry. They
appear in the PCI Devices list in the Settings tab for the host.
You can use the esxcli network sriovnic vCLI commands to examine the configuration of virtual
functions on the host.
What to do next
Associate a virtual machine with a virtual function through an SR-IOV passthrough network adapter.
vSphere Networking
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