The Adapter Configuration Option(ACO) support is a new feature available with the FW1060 release for SR-IOV capable adapters. The initial support is available for the EC71/EC72 (2 port x 25Gbps) adapters.
The SR-IOV Adapter Configuration Option feature allows an end user to select an Adapter’s SR-IOV configuration at the time the adapter is put into SR-IOV shared mode. The Adapter Configuration Option determines the system resources consumed for the adapter. This allows the user to choose an adapter’s SR-IOV configuration based on their requirements, potentially conserving system resources (e.g. hypervisor memory). For example:
· The “Thin” ACO configuration supports fewer SR-IOV logical ports (VFs) than the default “Enterprise” ACO configuration, but also consumes less hypervisor memory.
· The “Enterprise” ACO configuration consumes more memory than the “Thin” ACO configuration, but also supports a larger number of logical ports.
For the EC71/EC72 adapter, the Enterprise option allows for a maximum of 80 Ethernet logical ports or a maximum of 12 RoCE logical ports, and the Thin configuration allows for 16 Ethernet logical ports with 4 RoCE logical ports (see Maximum Logical Ports options below).
The Thin configuration may be desirable for smaller system such as the IBM Power S1012.
· The Thin configuration consumes approximately 1.3GB of hypervisor memory per adapter prior to configuration of logical ports.
The Enterprise configuration is more suited to enterprise systems like E1080 /E1050 where a customer has more Virtual Machines running.
· The Enterprise configuration consumes approximately 2.9GB of hypervisor memory per adapter prior to configuration of logical ports.
The ACO configuration selected also determines the physical port’s “Maximum Logical Ports options”.
For the Enterprise configuration the user can modify the physical port’s Maximum SR-IOV Logical Ports option to select the maximum number and type of logical ports.
In case the user needs to exploit both NIC and RoCE functionality on a physical port based on requirement, further selection of Port configuration options is required.
When the user selects Thin configuration, the physical port’s Maximum SR-IOV Logical Ports options is limited to a single option of 8 Ethernet and 2 RoCE logical ports, thereby giving flexibility of using both NIC and RoCE functionality.
By exploiting this ACO feature of SR-IOV, PowerVM user can optimize Hypervisor memory usage per adapter, thereby reducing the overall hypervisor memory usage for IO adapters
Contacting the PowerVM Team
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