VMware vSphere leverages a vast vSphere driver ecosystem to run various I/O stacks like networking and storage on server platforms. This ecosystem is built out with technologies from many I/O partners. To better address the need to build software-defined infrastructure (SDI) based on vSphere, VMware introduced the vSphere kernel native AP
The Native Device Driver architecture is not something new. Since its introduction more than five years ago, VMware encourages their hardware ecosystem partners to work on developing native drivers.
VMware plans to deprecate the vmkLinux APIs and associated driver ecosystem with the next numbered release (not an update release) of VMware vSphere. The next version of vSphere will be the terminal release for which vmkLinux APIs and its associated driver ecosystem will be available. For more information see also: What is the Impact of the VMKlinux Driver Stack Deprecation?
VMware KB 52044 (Network I/O performance regression after migrating from bnx2x driver to qfle3 driver)
When you upgrade from VMware ESXi 6.5 to 6.7, you experience the below symptoms:
- Qlogic E3 NIC driver migrates from bnx2x to qfle3 driver.
- You experience performance regression, i.e higher CPU utilization, lower throughput in some cases.
This issue occurs due to the difference in data path mechanism: bnx2x supports queue-paring mode, while qfle3 does not. As the result, qfle3consumes more MSI-X vectors in data path, which in turn causes higher system overhead. Because of the lack of queue-paring mode, networking Load balance is also unable to consolidate traffic in netqueue.
To resolve this issue:
1. Disable qfle3 driver and enable bnx2x driver by running the below commands:
esxcli system module set –enabled=true –module=bnx2x
esxcli system module set –enabled=false –module=qfle3
2. Reboot the ESXi host.
Note: VMware ESXi 6.7 image is shipped with both bnx2x and qfle3 drivers.
Custom ISO vs. vanilla ISO
Broadcom 57810-k DP 10Gb NDC ( SRIOV)
See also VMware KB Enabling and Disabling Native Drivers in ESXi 6.5 (2147565) https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147565
