lan card

[David Willams]

Why does my HP AD385-60001 PCI-X 10GBase-SR
shows as HP PCI/PCI-X 1000Base-T on the HPVM Guest

[Michael Steele_2 · Accepted solution]

HI

Verify the hardware addresses in ioscan and the pci slots. Get a flashlight and maybe a magnifying glass.

ioscan -funC lan

[Duncan Edmonstone]

David,

From the HPVM4.1 release notes ( http://docs.hp.com/en/T2767-90191/ch07s02.html?btnNext=next%A0%BB ):

Calculating the Actual Utilization of the Virtual Network Card

The emulation of the virtual network I/O card is based on the Intel I8254X family. Thus, the virtual network card (vNIC) is presented to the guest operating system as PCI-X 1000Base-T with the speed of 1 Gb regardless of the physical network interface card backing the vswitch.


So regardless of what the pNIC actually is, the vNIC will always appear as a GbE interface - that doesn't mean its limited to 1Gb speeds though.

However I'd be surprised if you can drive a whole 10Gb of througput through a single vNIC without incurring a hefty CPU overhead for that virtual IO - presumably you will have many VM guests using this pNIC?

HTH

Duncan

[David Willams]

# print_manifest | grep lan -----> ON THE HOST
lan 1/0/1/1/0/6/0 iether HP AB290-60001 PCI/PCI-X 1000Ba se-T 2-port U320 SCSI/2-port 1000B-T Combo Adapt
lan 1/0/1/1/0/6/1 iether HP AB290-60001 PCI/PCI-X 1000Ba se-T 2-port U320 SCSI/2-port 1000B-T Combo Adapt
lan 1/0/6/1/0/6/0 igelan HP AB465-60001 PCI/PCI-X 1000Ba se-T 2-port 2Gb FC/2-port 1000B-T Combo Adapter
lan 1/0/6/1/0/6/1 igelan HP AB465-60001 PCI/PCI-X 1000Ba se-T 2-port 2Gb FC/2-port 1000B-T Combo Adapter
lan 1/0/12/1/0 ixgbe HP AD385-60001 PCI-X 10GBase-SR-----------??????
lan 1/0/14/1/0/6/0 igelan HP AB465-60001 PCI/PCI-X 1000Ba se-T 2-port 2Gb FC/2-port 1000B-T Combo Adapter
lan 1/0/14/1/0/6/1 igelan HP AB465-60001 PCI/PCI-X 1000Ba se-T 2-port 2Gb FC/2-port 1000B-T Combo Adapter


Interface Adaptor Name/Num PortNum Bus Dev Ftn Mac Address
========= ========== ========== ======= === === === =================
vswitch lan vs_fe2 1 0 2 0 86-4d-ce-94-93-ac
vswitch lan vs_bk 2 0 4 0 aa-a2-7d-b2-f0-c9



Here it shows on the guest------

lan 0/0/2/0 iether HP PCI/PCI-X 1000Base-T
lan 0/0/4/0 iether HP PCI/PCI-X 1000Base-T---------------?????

# hpvmnet
Name Number State Mode NamePPA MAC Address IPv4 Address
======== ====== ======= ========= ======== ============== ===============
localnet 1 Up Shared N/A N/A
vs_fe1 2 Up Shared lan2 0x00163573a23c
vs_fe2 3 Up Shared lan3 0x00163573a23d
vs_fe3 4 Up Shared lan5 0x00163573e20c
vs_fe4 5 Up Shared lan6 0x00163573e20d
vs_bk 6 Up Shared lan4 0x000cfc0092f5------------------> ????

[Michael Steele_2]

Hi

print_manifest is not a core utility. It's only a addon by ignite. So verify your print_manifest patches.

Here are the patches returned on the 'print manifest' search.

1.31 Kernel debugger cumulative patch PHKL_38040
posted: 2008/07/28
notes: PHKL_39462
posted: 2009/07/27
notes:
s700_800 11.X OV NNM7.51 PA-RISC Intermediate Patch 18 PHSS_37273
posted: 2007/11/23
notes: PHSS_37273
posted: 2007/11/23
notes:
s700_800 11.X OV NNM7.51 IA-64 Intermediate Patch 18 PHSS_37274
posted: 2007/11/23
notes: PHSS_37274
posted: 2007/11/23
notes:
11.31 Aries cumulative patch PHSS_39294
posted: 2009/05/25
notes: PHSS_39294
posted: 2009/05/25
notes:
11.31 32-bit perl patch on E.5.8.8.C PHSS_39653
posted: 2009/04/08
PHSS_39653
posted: 2009/04/08

11.31 64-bit perl patch on E.5.8.8.C PHSS_39693
posted: 2009/04/08
PHSS_39693
posted: 2009/04/08

[Michael Steele_2]

Please paste in

ioscan -funC lan

[Grayh]

In ioscan on the host it shows as

1/0/12/1/0 lan HP AD385-60001 PCI-X 10GBase-SR

the same card in ioscan on the guest shows as

0/0/2/0 lan HP PCI/PCI-X 1000Base-T

[David Willams]

No Gray.... It actually shows like below on the Host:

1/0/12/1/0 ixgbe HP AD385-60001 PCI-X 10GBase-SR

And On the Guest :

0/0/4/0 iether HP PCI/PCI-X 1000Base-T

when I do a hpvmnet it is :

vs_bk 6 Up Shared lan4 0x000cfc0092f5

In lanscan it is lan4

[Duncan Edmonstone]

David,

Are you choosing to ignore my reply cos you don't like the answer???

As I explained _all_ vNICs in a VM guest will _always_ be presented as 1000BaseT (GbE) cards _regardless_ of the actual physical NIC.

If you had an old fast ethernet (100BaseT) card on your VM host it would still show up as the same 1000BaseT card on your VM guest - it's a virtualised NIC - why would HP want to have half a dozen different drivers in the guest for all these different types and speeds of NIC? So we just use one driver and the VM uses virtual IO to emulate a 1000BaseT card.

As I said, this _does not_ mean you are limited to 1000Mb/s though - the vNIC will go as fast as the VM can handle.

HTH

Duncan

[David Willams]

Duncan,

Sorry, I didn't mean that.The performance of this NIC card on the HOST is much faster than on the VM. like 2-3 times faster than the VM

How to decide/calculate how fast the vNIC will go on the VM ...

[Duncan Edmonstone]

David,

The physical NIC is _always_ goin to be faster that the virtual NIC as its doing physical IO and the virtual NIC is doing virtual IO...

However at this stage we need to determine what you mean by "faster". How did you test this? What commands did you run to reach this conclusion? (ftp, scp rcp etc are normally not a good test of the speed of a NIC)

HTH

Duncan

[Duncan Edmonstone]

and I should have asked - have you setup the vNIC as an AVIO NIC or just a VIO vNIC?

http://docs.hp.com/en/T2767-90180/ch01s04.html

HTH

Duncan

[David Willams]

I have setup the NIC as a VIO...

How can I modify it to AVIO

[Torsten.]

hpvmmodify it from "normal" lan (VIO) to AVIO and make sure the guest has all the drivers installed.

[David Willams]

.