
Issue 11
© Solarflare Communications 2014
328
Solarflare Server Adapter
User Guide
transmit and receive queues. The Solarflare plugin model fully supports intelligently spreading
network traffic over multiple queues to scale performance over the available CPUs. This is
termed receive side scaling (RSS) and is typically used in non-virtualized environments (Linux/
Windows) to improve network performance. With the Solarflare plugin model when VMs are
deployed to run on multiple (virtual) CPUs, each CPU can be given a dedicated transmit and
receive queue so that network performance scales over the available CPU cores.
8.3 Installation
Platform support
To use SR-IOV, platform support for hardware virtualization must be enabled. Refer to
for more information. On an Intel platform, the Xen hypervisor will, by
default, use the Intel IOMMU if it is enabled in the BIOS.
On an AMD platform the Xen hypevisor command line must be modified to enable the IOMMU.
Append the following statements to the hypervisor line in
/boot/extlinux.conf
amd_iommu=on iommu=amd-iommu-perdev-intremap
Install XenServer6 with SR-IOV supplemental pack
1
Burn the supplemental pack (
xs-SR-IOV-1.1.7-sfc.iso
) to a CD.
2
Insert the CD when prompted to do so by the XenServer6 installation.
Update adapter firmware and enable SR-IOV
1
Download the Solarflare Linux Utilities (SF-104451-LS) from
support.solarflare.com
.
2
Install the Linux Utilities in dom0 using the rpm provided in this package:
# rpm -Uvh sfutils-<version>.rpm
3
Display the current firmware version on the adapter:
# sfupdate
4
Upgrade the adapter firmware with sfupdate:
# sfupdate --write
5
Use sfboot to enable SR-IOV and enable 16 VFs:
# sfboot sriov=enabled vf-count=16
6
A reboot is required for the changes to take effect. After the reboot the sfc driver will initialize
the VFs, and they will appear in lspci:
# lspci -d 1924:
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Solarflare Communications SFL9021
[Solarstorm]
06:00.1 Ethernet controller: Solarflare Communications SFL9021
[Solarstorm]
06:00.2 Ethernet controller: Solarflare Communications Device 1813
06:00.4 Ethernet controller: Solarflare Communications Device 1813
06:00.6 Ethernet controller: Solarflare Communications Device 1813