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Enabling SR-IOV
This chapter provides information about single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV):
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 Cavium adapters support SR-IOV; refer to your product documentation for
details.
Enabling SR-IOV
Before attempting to enable SR-IOV, ensure that:
The adapter hardware supports SR-IOV.
SR-IOV is supported and enabled in the system BIOS.
