[dpdk-users] vmxnet3 RSS implementation

[Jay Miller]

Greetings Programs,

We're having trouble getting RSS distribution working on vmxnet3.  It 
appears that no matter what we do from the hypervisor side that load 
balancing in vmxnet3 is only via mac address. We're not able to get 
distribution across queues based on the 5-tuple hash.

Certainly we don't see this limitation on KVM.  But we did notice that 
DPDK documentation seems to imply this:

>
>     36.2. Features and Limitations of VMXNET3 PMD
>
> In release 1.6.0, the VMXNET3 PMD provides the basic functionality of 
> packet reception and transmission. There are several options available 
> for filtering packets at VMXNET3 device level including:
>
>  1. *MAC Address based filtering*:
>       * Unicast, Broadcast, All Multicast modes - SUPPORTED BY DEFAULT
>       * Multicast with Multicast Filter table - NOT SUPPORTED
>       * Promiscuous mode - SUPPORTED
>       * *RSS based load balancing between queues - SUPPORTED*
>

Is this an expected limitation?  One could argue that it's not true RSS 
support if this is the case.

Thanks,

Jay Miller

-- 
Jay Miller | Tech Lead | Mobile: +1.781.258.7446
Oracle Communications Global Business Unit
100 Crosby Drive | Bedford, MA 01730