NAME

       vmx — VMware VMXNET3 Virtual Interface Controller device

SYNOPSIS

       To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

             device iflib
             device vmx

       Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):

             if_vmx_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

       The  vmx driver provides support for the VMXNET3 virtual NIC available in virtual machines by VMware.  It
       appears as a simple Ethernet device but is actually a virtual network interface to  the  underlying  host
       operating system.

       This  driver  supports  the  VMXNET3  driver  protocol,  as  an alternative to the emulated pcn(4), em(4)
       interfaces also available in the VMware environment.   The  vmx  driver  is  optimized  for  the  virtual
       machine,  it  can provide advanced capabilities depending on the underlying host operating system and the
       physical network interface controller of the host.  The vmx  driver  supports  features  like  multiqueue
       support,  IPv6  checksum  offloading,  MSI/MSI-X support and hardware VLAN tagging in VMware's VLAN Guest
       Tagging (VGT) mode.

       The vmx driver supports VMXNET3 VMware virtual NICs provided by the virtual machine hardware version 7 or
       newer, as provided by the following products:

             •   VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0 and newer
             •   VMware Server 2.0 and newer
             •   VMware Workstation 6.5 and newer
             •   VMware Fusion 2.0 and newer

       For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

MULTIPLE QUEUES

       The vmx driver supports multiple transmit and receive queues.  Multiple  queues  are  only  supported  by
       certain  VMware products, such as ESXi.  The number of queues allocated depends on the presence of MSI-X,
       the number of configured CPUs, and the tunables listed below.  FreeBSD does not enable MSI-X  support  on
       VMware by default.  The hw.pci.honor_msi_blacklist tunable must be disabled to enable MSI-X support.

LOADER TUNABLES

       Tunables can be set at the loader(8) prompt before booting the kernel or stored in loader.conf(5).

       hw.vmx.txnqueue

       hw.vmx.X.txnqueue
               Maximum  number  of  transmit queues allocated by default by the driver.  The default value is 8.
               The maximum supported by the VMXNET3 virtual NIC is 8.

       hw.vmx.rxnqueue

       hw.vmx.X.rxnqueue
               Maximum number of receive queues allocated by default by the driver.  The  default  value  is  8.
               The maximum supported by the VMXNET3 virtual NIC is 16.

       hw.vmx.txndesc

       hw.vmx.X.txndesc

               Number  of  transmit  descriptors  allocated by the driver.  The default value is 512.  The value
               must be a multiple of 32, and the maximum is 4096.

       hw.vmx.rxndesc

       hw.vmx.X.rxndesc

               Number of receive descriptors per ring allocated by the driver.  The default value is  256.   The
               value must be a multiple of 32, and the maximum is 2048.  There are two rings so the actual usage
               is doubled.

EXAMPLES

       The following entry must be added to the VMware configuration file to provide the vmx device:

             ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"

SEE ALSO

       altq(4), arp(4), em(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), pcn(4), vlan(4), ifconfig(8)

AUTHORS

       The   vmx   driver   was   ported   from   OpenBSD   and  significantly  rewritten  by  Bryan  Venteicher
       <bryanv@freebsd.org>.  The OpenBSD driver was written by Tsubai Masanari.

Debian                                          January 30, 2019                                          VMX(4)