SR-IOV on Hyper-V?

[TrevorX]

I'm testing out a FreeNAS VM and setting up a pfSense VM (also based on FreeBSD) on my Hyper-V server, and I want to give the VMs low-level access to the NIC using SR-IOV. The hardware (see sig) all supports this, and inspecting SR-IOV capabilities on the host side using PowerShell show everything is available. The Virtual Switches have been created with the SR-IOV capability checked and passed through to the VMs, but it's at this point that I don't know my way around FreeBSD well enough to get it working on the VMs.

I have managed to find this which seems to show that SR-IOV on FreeBSD is indeed possible, including some basic commands for setting it up, but the slides don't go into much detail and leave a lot out, too. For example, it's all well and good to have a command like iovctl, but how do I find the PF (physical function) and VF (Virtual Fuction) device names? Without a command to list available devices I can't really get anywhere.

I've also spoken to a couple of people who got thrown by the fact that I'm running this on Hyper-V, because they don't have much experience with it and thought a Hyper-V specific solution would be required, but from my reading of it I don't believe that's the case - SR-IOV is an open standard, so the host-side shouldn't really matter - as long as the hardware supports it, all the configuration happens within the VM, not the hypervisor. Although I could be wrong, of course, but as I haven't reached the point of having it configured correctly on the VM, it seems sensible to focus on that first.

So does anyone have any experience using SR-IOV with FreeBSD, or have suggestions for how I might figure this out?

Many thanks,

Trevor

 

[bigphil]

Your sig isn't showing so cant see what hardware you're running (using Chrome on desktop).

 

[TrevorX]

Your sig isn't showing so cant see what hardware you're running (using Chrome on desktop).

That's weird, it disappeared overnight. Fixed now, thanks

 

[bigphil]

It looks like to me that a virtual function driver was never created for the i350 nic's under FreeBSD...I can only find a Linux vf driver for that nic. You'll need a different nic that has a vf driver for FreeBSD (Intel X710 based, 82599, X540, etc, or a different manufacturer with support for it).

 

[aim4min]

I get an immediate kernel panic (not really a panic, but an infinite stack-trace) during boot when I enable SR-IOV on any virtual switch in the Hyper-V Server. It goes away after I disable SR-IOV. Would love to enable it, but I think it might be a FreeBSD issue.

I know that doesn't help, but I just wanted to chime in.

Using Hyper-V Server 2016 (Core, not windows server) and FreeNas 11.0-U4.

 

[TrevorX]

It looks like to me that a virtual function driver was never created for the i350 nic's under FreeBSD...I can only find a Linux vf driver for that nic. You'll need a different nic that has a vf driver for FreeBSD (Intel X710 based, 82599, X540, etc, or a different manufacturer with support for it).

Thanks BigPhil. Sorry I didn't reply earlier, I got snowed under with work and had to put this on the backburner. Seems like I'll just have to use standard VSwitches for now, I won't be upgrading to X550 for another year or two.

 

[TrevorX]

I get an immediate kernel panic (not really a panic, but an infinite stack-trace) during boot when I enable SR-IOV on any virtual switch in the Hyper-V Server. It goes away after I disable SR-IOV. Would love to enable it, but I think it might be a FreeBSD issue.

I know that doesn't help, but I just wanted to chime in.

Using Hyper-V Server 2016 (Core, not windows server) and FreeNas 11.0-U4.

Thanks anyway, the more discussion there is on rare topics the easier it is for people to figure out if it's worth pursuing. Seems that it's not really worth bothering with SR-IOV for my current FreeBSD environment, which is a shame but hardly the end of the world.