Various Network Adapter Types of VMware Interface
Contents |
Types of network interfaces for FreeSBC
FreeSBC uses network interface types below,
- Intel E1000 emulated NIC card
- VMXNET3 para-virtualized driver
- PCI Passthrough
- SR-IOV
The VMware adapter types setting can be set from below,
And then see TSBC-SW:WebPortal:Initial Configuration
E1000
E1000 makes the VM to think it is really accessing a physical NIC adapter. It is simulated (i.e. slowest of all interface types) but is universally supported.
VMXNET3
VMXNET3 is a driver where the VM knows it runs in a virtual environment. It is faster than emulated NIC but requires the VM to have open-vm-tools.rpm installed.
PCI Passthrough
PCI Passthrough allows a VM to access directly (using PCI bus) one physical NIC from the host.
- Very fast access
- Rx hardware buffers dedicated to one VM
- Dedicates the NIC to only a single VM
- VM cannot be migrated to another host live because of changing PCI ID of the NIC card
- DPDK needs to support the physical NIC adapter
- Host bios needs to have been enabled to support DMA remapping (IOMMU or Intel VT-d)
Network PCI device can be added to VM from below,
And then see TSBC-SW:Cloud:VMware Adding Passthrough Interfaces A
SR-IOV
SR-IOV allows multiple VM to access directly to one portion of a physical NIC from from host.
- Very fast access
- Rx hardware buffers dedicated to one VM
- Can share a single NIC card with multiple VMs
- VM cannot be migrated to another host live because of changing PCI ID of the NIC card
- DPDK needs to support the physical NIC adapter
- Vmware host needs to have the license to allow SR-IOV
- Host bios needs to have been enabled to support DMA remapping (IOMMU or Intel VT-d)
- Physical NIC adapter needs to be SR-IOV capable
SR-IOV can be configured from below,
Latest performance metrics on Vmware 6.5
| Network interface types | Nb max sessions (*) |
|---|---|
| E1000 | 5,000 |
| VMXNET3 | 8,000 |
| PCI Passthrough | 36,000 |
| SR-IOV | (no license available)
Probably close to PCI passthrough |
- * Tested on a Dell R610, 3.07Ghz with 6 vCPU
