what is the vmware passthrough in policy in the vnic potion of the service profile

[miwitte]

customer was asking..

[cpaggen]

It's used in conjunction with "VN-Link in hardware". This is a feature available with the Cisco M81KR VIC adapter and VMware vSphere (Entreprise Plus). The feature allows UCS to instantiate a DVS in vCenter and propose port-groups to VMs. Those port-groups actually leverage hardware processing of traffic on the M81KR adapter (bypassing or passing through the hypervisor, hence the name of the policy).

See http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/gui/config/guide/1.3.1/UCSM_GUI_Configuration_Guide_1_3_1_chapter28.html for more details.

[dani_bosch]

In the VN-Link config on Jeremy's video http://jeremywaldrop.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/cisco-ucs-vn-link-hardware-implementation-walk-through/

he uses "VMware" adapter policy instead of "VMwarePassthru".

I assume the first is for Passthrough Switching (PTS) while the second is for Hypervisor Bypass (VMDirectPath).

Is it correct?

Thanks a lot,

[Jeremy Waldrop]

The VMware passthrough policy is for the dynamic vNIC connection policy vNICs and not for the regular vNICs assigned to the host. See the screen shot.

[dani_bosch]

Jeremy, I might be wrong, and the video quality doesn't help a lot, but if I had to I would assure in the video you recorded the policy applied is "VMware" and not "VMwarePassThru" (min 02:22).

Is it just a video issue, or rather you did configure the simple VMWARE and not the PASSTRHU policy?

Thanks,

[Jeremy Waldrop]

Woops, it should be VMware. I get the 2 mixed up sometimes and didn't check before I did the last post. The VMWarepasthru is for the VMDirectPath I/O and not the VN-Link configuration. The video is correct and sorry for the poor quality it was such a long video that HD would be too large a file.

sorry for the confusion

[dani_bosch]

Exactly, that's what I was guessing.

Thanks a lot Jeremy.