xref: /netbsd-src/share/man/man4/vmx.4 (revision d87a4d00addacbb1d71422c5ad4e7702ee06e286)
1.\"	$NetBSD: vmx.4,v 1.1 2020/10/14 10:19:11 ryo Exp $
2.\"	$OpenBSD: vmx.4,v 1.1 2013/05/31 20:18:44 reyk Exp $
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4.\" Copyright (c) 2006,2013 Reyk Floeter <reyk@openbsd.org>
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18.Dd June 7, 2014
19.Dt VMX 4
20.Os
21.Sh NAME
22.Nm vmx
23.Nd VMware VMXNET3 Virtual Interface Controller device
24.Sh SYNOPSIS
25.Cd "vmx* at pci? dev ? function ?"
26.Sh DESCRIPTION
27The
28.Nm
29driver provides support for the VMXNET3 virtual NIC available in virtual
30machines by VMware.
31It appears as a simple Ethernet device but is actually a virtual network
32interface to the underlying host operating system.
33.Pp
34This driver supports the
35.Ic VMXNET3
36driver protocol, as an alternative to the emulated
37.Xr pcn 4 ,
38.Xr wm 4
39interfaces also available in the VMware environment.
40The
41.Nm vmx
42driver is optimized for the virtual machine, it can provide advanced
43capabilities depending on the underlying host operating system and
44the physical network interface controller of the host.
45In comparison to the earlier VMXNET versions,
46VMXNET3 supports additional features like multiqueue support, IPv6
47checksum offloading, MSI/MSI-X support and hardware VLAN tagging in
48VMware's VLAN Guest Tagging (VGT) mode.
49.Pp
50The
51.Nm
52driver supports VMXNET3 VMware virtual NICs provided by the virtual
53machine hardware version 7 or newer, as provided by the following
54products:
55.Pp
56.Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent
57.It
58VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0 and newer
59.It
60VMware Server 2.0 and newer
61.It
62VMware Workstation 6.5 and newer
63.It
64VMware Fusion 2.0 and newer
65.El
66.Pp
67The
68.Nm
69driver supports the following media types:
70.Bl -tag -width autoselect
71.It autoselect
72Enable autoselection of the media type and options.
73The driver always uses the fastest available speed and the media
74options provided by the underlying host of the virtual machine.
75.It 10GbaseT mediaopt full-duplex
76Set 10Gbps operation.
77.It 1000baseT mediaopt full-duplex
78Set 1000Mbps operation.
79.El
80.Pp
81For more information on configuring this device, see
82.Xr ifconfig 8 .
83.Sh EXAMPLES
84The following entry must be added to the VMware configuration file
85to provide the
86.Nm
87device:
88.Bd -literal -offset indent
89ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"
90.Ed
91.Sh SEE ALSO
92.Xr arp 4 ,
93.Xr ifmedia 4 ,
94.Xr intro 4 ,
95.Xr netintro 4 ,
96.Xr pci 4 ,
97.Xr pcn 4 ,
98.Xr wm 4 ,
99.Xr ifconfig 8
100.Sh HISTORY
101The
102.Nm
103device driver first appeared in
104.Ox 5.5
105and was ported for
106.Nx 7.0 .
107.Sh AUTHORS
108.An -nosplit
109The
110.Nm
111driver was originally written by
112.An Tsubai Masanari .
113.Nx porting was done by
114.An Hikaru ABE
115.Aq Mt hikaru@NetBSD.org .
116