R80.40 - Multi Queue on VMWare vmxnet3 drivers.

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

During a virtual installation under VMWare I noticed that vmxnet3 drivers for Multi Queueing are used here.

I only know that this works for the following drivers: igb, ixgbe, i40e, mlx5_core. These are also described in the "Performance Tuning R80.40 Administration Guide".

Is the driver "vmxnet3" supported for R80.40 Multi Queue?

VMWare SK2020567:

Receive side scaling (RSS) and multiqueue support are included in the VMXNET3 Linux device driver. The VMXNET3 device always supported multiple queues, but the Linux driver used one Rx and one Tx queue previously.

• For the VMXNET3 driver shipped with VMware Tools, multiqueue support was introduced in vSphere 5.0.
• For the VMXNET3 driver included with the Linux operating system, multiqueue support was introduced after and including Linux kernel version 2.6.37.

Multiqueue is a technique designed to enhance networking performance by allowing the Tx and Rx queues to scale with the number of CPUs in multi-processor systems. Many physical network adapters support multiqueue, and if you have this technology enabled on your NIC, Linux virtual machines running on vSphere 5 can take advantage of it.

For transmit, the Linux kernel selects which Tx queue on which a packet should go out. For receive, RSS produces a hash based on the TCP source and destination ports, and IPv4 source and destination addresses that are used to dispatch packets from different flows to different queues.

This table summarizes multiqueue/RSS support:

	VMXNET3 VMware Tools driver version	VMXNET3 Linux driver version
Multiqueue/RSS support exists	1.0.15.0 and later (introduced in vSphere 5.0)	1.0.16.0-k and later (introduced in Linux kernel 2.6.37)
Multiqueue/RSS support exists, but must be enabled	1.0.15.0 to 1.0.23.x	--
Enabled by default	1.0.24.0 and later	10.0.16.0-k and later

[G_W_Albrecht]

According to sk104848: Check Point recommends the use of VMXNET Generation 3 (VMXNET3) on all supported Gaia releases. 

For more information on the configuration and usage of VMXNET3 network adapters, refer to sk110686 - How to configure VMXNET3 Network Adapters.

Would not make sense to recommend something that does not support Multi Queue 😉

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

Thanks @G_W_Albrecht  I know the SK.

My question is:

This driver supports multi-queueing since R80.40.
I can't find any information about this in the documentation or in SK's. Therefore my question!

Is there official multi-queueing support for the driver "vmxnet3"?

[Timothy_Hall]

On R80.40 it certainly looks like Multi-Queue is working as expected with the vmxnet3 driver, so it probably works on the Gaia 3.10 kernel version of R80.30 as well:

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

MQ will work on all Linux / GAIA 3.10 kernels with vmxnet3 drivers. Therefore MQ works under VMWare with Check Point version R80.40 and R80.30 kernel 3.10.

The big question is:
Is there support from Check Point for this?

I could not found anything about it in the documentation or in SK's.

[HristoGrigorov]

My way of thinking is... This driver is part of Gaia OS that is supported by CheckPoint (and VMware for that matter). If there are no docs for limited support, then logical to think is, it is fully supported. 

[HristoGrigorov]

If VMware supports it officially I see no reason CheckPoint to not do it:

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2020567

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

Hi @PhoneBoy 

any news from Check Point in this case:

Is the driver "vmxnet3" supported for R80.40 Multi Queue?

[_Val_]

@HeikoAnkenbrand Although we are checking this for you now, the most efficient way to receive an official answer in this case is to raise the question to TAC.

[Tal_Martsiano]

Hi @HeikoAnkenbrand 

MQ supports vmxnet3 in R80.40, we will update our documentation accordingly.

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

Hi @Tal_Martsiano,

Now we can build high performance firewalls with multi queue under ESX.

Nice!

Thanks
Heiko

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

Hi @Tal_Martsiano,

The next question is.  What is the maximum number of RX queues?Maximal number of RX queuesaximal number of RX queues

[HeikoAnkenbrand]

The annswer is 8 RX queues.