6.7

Table Of Contents
For two virtual machines that run on different ESXi hosts, when at least one of the hosts does not have a
physical RDMA device, the communication falls back to a TCP-based channel and the performance is
reduced.
PVRDMA Support
vSphere 6.5 and later supports PVRDMA only in environments with specific configuration.
Supported Configurations
To use PVRDMA in vSphere 6.5, your environment must meet several configuration requirements.
Table 103. Supported Configurations for Using PVRDMA
Component Requirements
vSphere
n
ESXi host 6.5 or later.
n
vCenter Server or vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 or later.
n
vSphere Distributed Switch.
Physical host
n
Must be compatible with the ESXi release.
Host Channel Adapter (HCA)
n
Must be compatible with the ESXi release.
Note Virtual machines that reside on different ESXi hosts
require HCA to use RDMA . You must assign the HCA as an
uplink for the vSphere Distributed Switch. PVRDMA does
not support NIC teaming. The HCA must be the only uplink
on the vSphere Distributed Switch.
For virtual machines on the same ESXi hosts or virtual
machines using the TCP-based fallback, the HCA is not
required.
Virtual machine
n
Virtual hardware verison 13 or later.
Guest OS
n
Linux (64-bit)
To verify that your physical hosts and HCAs are compatible with ESXi releases, see the VMware
Compatibility Guide.
Note Attempts to enable or configure unsupported features with PVRDMA in the vSphere Web Client
might result in unexpected behavior in your environment.
Configure an ESXi Host for PVRDMA
Configure the VMkernel adapter and firewall rule of an ESXi host for PVRDMA communication.
Prerequisites
Verify that your ESXi host meets the requirements for PVRDMA. See PVRDMA Support.
n
Tag a VMkernel Adapter for PVRDMA
Select a VMkernel adapter and enable it for PVRDMA communication.
vSphere Networking
VMware, Inc. 159