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Sr-IOV Server 2012 I350-T4

idata
Employee
4,241 Views

I have a Dell 720 Server with a I350-T4 card installed with the latest drivers and firmware running Server 2012 with the HyperV role. I am having trouble creating a Virtual switch in HyperV that will show SR-IOV enabled. My main concern with the output below is that the CurrentCapabilities and the HardwareCapabilities are blank. I believe there is supposed to be a value of MSFT_NetAdapterSriovCapabilities in both fields. Can someone please point me in the right direction here?

POWERSHELL OUTPUT

Get-NetAdapterSriov | fl *

ifAlias : SLOT 1 1

InterfaceAlias : SLOT 1 1

ifDesc : Intel(R) Gigabit 4P I350-t Adapter # 2

SriovSupport : Supported

Caption : MSFT_NetAdapterSriovSettingData 'Intel(R) Gigabit 4P I350-t Adapter # 2'

Description : Intel(R) Gigabit 4P I350-t Adapter # 2

ElementName : Intel(R) Gigabit 4P I350-t Adapter # 2

InstanceID : {6DBCA796-2B54-41B4-B0F4-CCA89B1CCB12}

InterfaceDescription : Intel(R) Gigabit 4P I350-t Adapter # 2

Name : SLOT 1 1

Source : 3

SystemName : Server1

CurrentCapabilities :

Enabled : True

HardwareCapabilities :

NumActiveDefaultVPortMacAddresses :

NumActiveDefaultVPortVlanIds :

NumActiveNonDefaultVPortMacAddresses :

NumActiveNonDefaultVPortVlanIds :

NumActiveVPorts :

NumAllocatedVFs :

NumQueuePairsForDefaultVPort :

NumQueuePairsForNonDefaultVPorts :

NumVFs : 6

NumVPorts :

SwitchName : DefaultSwitchName

SwitchType : 1

PSComputerName :

CimClass : ROOT/StandardCimv2:MSFT_NetAdapterSriovSettingData

CimInstanceProperties : {Caption, Description, ElementName, InstanceID...}

CimSystemProperties : Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimSystemProperties

PS Z:\> new-vmswitch SRIOV -NetAdapterName "SLOT 1 1" -EnableIov $True

Name SwitchType NetAdapterInterfaceDescription

---- ---------- ------------------------------

SRIOV External Intel(R) Gigabit 4P I350-t Adapter # 2

PS Z:\> Get-VMSwitch | fl *iov*

IovEnabled : True

IovVirtualFunctionCount : 0

IovVirtualFunctionsInUse : 0

IovQueuePairCount : 0

IovQueuePairsInUse : 0

IovSupport : False

IovSupportReasons : {This network adapter does not support SR-IOV.}

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6 Replies
Patrick_K_Intel1
Employee
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Hi Ryan,

Thanks for posting to our site. I am quite familiar with that particular server and I suspect I may know what the issue is.

Let me ask a question to be sure. The Intel I350-T4 card you are using - was it purchased with the server (from Dell), or separately (not from Dell, but an Intel generic retail device)?

thanx,

Patrick

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idata
Employee
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Hi Patrick,

These have a Dell part number, I didn't originally order these with the servers, but these nics did come from Dell. I thought I was getting GigE Nics with SR-IOV when I ordered Broadcom 5719/5720, but the documentation was misleading and I have found out that Broadcom only support that on 10GB nics. So I got a couple of Intel Nics from Dell that I am supposed to troubleshoot to verify that I can get SR-IOV up and running and they are going to swap out about ten quad port nics with Intel Nics. Please tell me the issue with Dell Intel vs Intel Nics.

Here is all the information/numbers in the NIC.

Dell P/n - 09YD6K

MY-09YD6K-12402-284-000U-A00

A0369F11418C 322AD G32100-003

MAC : a0-36-9f-11-41-8c

Manufactured - 08/2012

Made in Malaysia

Thanks,

Ryan

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Patrick_K_Intel1
Employee
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Thanx Ryan,

Unfortunately I don't have good news for you. That Dell specific device does not support SR-IOV.

When a major OEM bundles Intel NICs with their systems, they decide what features they wish to support and which they don't want to support. In this case, despite my best efforts to convince them otherwise, Dell chose to disable SR-IOV on that device.

If you were to get an Intel Generic (non-branded by an OEM) I350 it does support SR-IOV on your server (I've done so personally many times).

I wish I had better news for you, in this case Intel has no control and little say in what features an OEM will decide support and which they will decide to disable.

- Patrick

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idata
Employee
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I recently purchased a PowerEdge R720 with two Intel I350-T4s from Dell (One as a daughter card, the other as a PCI-E card). I could not, for the life of me, figure out what I was doing wrong when trying to activate SR-IOV as it kept saying it was degraded even though I was using the latest Intel drivers and was following the official Intel documentation for Hyper-V.

I fell upon this thread and was personally outraged to find out that Dell had decided to strip functionality out of their "version" of the I350-T4. The reason I was outraged wasn't so much because they removed SR-IOV from the I350-T4 but because they sell the network card under the exact same title as if it were the generic retail version. Having Dell sell me an "Intel I350-T4" which is actually a "Dell-modified Intel I350-T4 Light" is flat out deceitful.

OEMs who choose to modify the retail functionality of Intel products should NOT be allowed to sell their modified version under the Intel brand. OEMs should only be allowed to sell an Intel product under the brand name if it is unaltered from the retail version. Anytime an Intel product has been modified for the specific needs of an OEM, it should be mandatory that all mentions of that product carry the OEM name in its title. In other words, Dell should not be allowed to sell the I350-T4 as "Intel I350-T4 Network Card" if it has functionality removed, they should be allowed to only sell it as something akin to "Dell I350-T4 Network Card" or "Dell I350-T4 Network Card by Intel".

Needless to say that I found the situation completely unacceptable on the behalf of Dell and they replaced my network cards with retail versions of the adapters. As soon as I installed the retail cards, SR-IOV started functioning correctly. I encourage anyone who is in this situation to complain to their Dell representative and demand they replace any Dell modified I350-T4s with retail versions.

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Patrick_K_Intel1
Employee
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Hi Ryan,

Follow-up-question. My marketing guy was hoping you could provide information on how you were planning on using SR-IOV on the Intel I350 device. Seems one of the big reasons Dell chose not to enable SR-IOV on the 1Gbps devices was that they did not feel thier customers would use SR-IOV on 1Gbps devices.

Maybe you can help us to persuede the OEMs to change their minds about this topic.

thanx,

Patrick

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idata
Employee
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Patrick,

I wanted to setup two virtual SQL Servers in a SQL Cluster with two front end Linux Servers in a Hyper-V Cluster environment and I don't have 10GB Switching. This is for our business system. I need this for 4 virtual servers essentially. I am going need 8 Nics with SR-IOV in each host server to do this. I have an iSCSI SAN on a separate VLAN that I need to connect all four virtual servers to within the virtual OS. I was going to team the Server Vlan and MPIO round robin the iSCSI Vlan on each virtual server. The teaming would happen within the Hyper-V virtual Switch not the host OS so SR-IOV would be enabled. I wanted the least Hyper-V networking overhead for these servers specifically. Here is the method I was going to use. Server 1 would connect to NIC 1 and 2, Server 2 would connect to NIC 2 and 3, Server 3 would connect to NIC 3 and 4, Server 4 would connect to NIC 4 and 1. I would use this same methodology for both the Server Vlan NICS and the iSCSI VLan Nics. Goal is to get near Physical network speed in a Virtual environment. But still have 4 host servers in a Hyper-V Cluster that can host my virtual servers and provide redundancy. Currently I have one quad port on-board card and three quad port low profile cards in three of my four servers and I need to purchase some additional NICs for my fourth as I made a minor mistake of not purchasing enough nics and my plan changed the more I learned about the 2012 Clustering.

Thanks.

Ryan

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