VMware Driver Software: Broadcom NetXtreme BCM57XX User Guide

Table 1: VMware Driver Packaging
Format	Drivers
VMware VIB	vmware-esx-drivers-net-tg3-version.x86_64.vib

To download, install, or update the VMware ESX/ESXi driver for NetXtreme I GbE network adapters, see http://www.vmware.com/support.

Driver Parameters

The optional parameter force_netq can be used to set the number of Rx and Tx net queues. BCM57XX devices that support NetQueue are the BCM5718, BCM5719, BCM5720, BCM5721, and BCM5722.

By default, the driver tries to use the optimal number of NetQueues. To explicitly force the number of queues, set the number of NetQueues per port via the following command:

the number of "x" entries can go up to 32, which means the maximum supported NICs = 32.

Note that the NIC # above does not correspond to the vmnic<#>. The NIC number is the system vmnic probe order number. Optimally, the number of NetQueues matches the number of CPUs on the machine.

Driver Parameters

Several optional parameters can be supplied as a command line argument to the vmkload_mod command. These parameters can also be set via the esxcfg-module command. See the man page for more information.

Driver Defaults

Table 2: VMware Driver Defaults
Parameter	Default Value
Speed	Autonegotiation with all speeds advertised
Flow Control	Autonegotiation with rx and tx advertised
MTU	1500 (range 46–9000)
Rx Ring Size	200 (range 0–511). Some chips are fixed at 64.
Rx Jumbo Ring Size	100 (range 0–255). Not all chips support the jumbo ring and some chips that suppoort jumbo frames do not use the jumbo ring.
Tx Ring Size	511 (range (MAX_SKB_FRAGS+1) – 511). MAX_SKB_FRAGS varies on different kernels and different architectures. On a 2.6 kernel for x86, MAX_SKB_FRAGS is 18.
Coalesce RX Microseconds	20 (range 0–1023)
Coalesce RX Microseconds irq	20 (range 0–255)
Coalesce rx frames	5 (range 0–1023)
Coalesce rx frames irq	5 (range 0–255)
Coalesce TX Microseconds	72 (range 0–1023)
Coalesce tx usecs irq	20 (range 0–255)
Coalesce tx frames	53 (range 0–1023)
Coalesce tx frames irq	5 (range 0–255)
Coalesce stats usecs	1000000 (aprox. 1 sec.). Some coalescing parameters are not used or have different defaults on some chips.
MSI	Enabled (if supported by the chip and passed the interrupt test).
WoL	Disabled

Driver Messages

The following are the most common sample messages that may be logged in the file /var/log/messages. Use dmesg -n <level> to control the level at which messages will appear on the console. Most systems are set to level 6 by default. To see all messages, set the level higher.