UCS M5: Using an interface as PCI passthrough for VMWARE 6.5.x

[Nadav]

Hi everyone,

We're integrating a network monitoring tool that's meant to connect to an ESXI 6.5 host (running on UCS M5) as a passthrough interface for performance reasons. We've enabled passthrough on that interface (an X710 PCI card), restarted the host and then both reserved guest RAM added that PCI card to the VM. We then rebooted the VM.

We are unable to see any traffic on this interface for both Windows and Linux machines, even though we've confirmed that traffic is indeed being sent down the ethernet cable.

Any ideas what could be missing? 

[Kirk J]

There used to be an issue with the native intel driver (i40en) at the VMware level that did "Malicious Driver Detection", and would stop passing traffic.  I understand you are using these in pass through mode, but I would confirm what your drivers are in each OS, and what firmware the card is running...

Kirk...

[Nadav]

Thanks for the quick response,

Upgrading the i40e drivers did it for Linux, Windows still not working well
but that may be due to OS limitations.

[IC2317]

Hi Nadav,

Can you check from ESXi if you are receiving any network traffic on that card. Just use esxtop, press n and generate traffic from your machines towards the destination. This will help you to identify if traffic is actually being received on that card at ESXi level.

[Nadav]

Hi,

No traffic was being passed until we updated the i40n drivers as mentioned
in a separate reply. Apparently guest OS drivers are no less important than
ESXi drivers for passthrough to work properly.