vmx(4) - NetBSD Manual Pages

VMX(4)                  NetBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual                 VMX(4)


NAME

     vmx -- VMware VMXNET3 Virtual Interface Controller device


SYNOPSIS

     vmx* at pci? dev ? function ?


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), wm(4) interfaces also available in the VMware envi-
     ronment.  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.  In
     comparison to the earlier VMXNET versions, VMXNET3 supports additional
     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 vir-
     tual 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

     The vmx driver supports the following media types:

     autoselect  Enable autoselection of the media type and options.  The
                 driver always uses the fastest available speed and the media
                 options provided by the underlying host of the virtual
                 machine.

     10GbaseT mediaopt full-duplex
                 Set 10Gbps operation.

     1000baseT mediaopt full-duplex
                 Set 1000Mbps operation.

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


EXAMPLES

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

           ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"


SEE ALSO

     arp(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), pcn(4), wm(4),
     ifconfig(8)


HISTORY

     The vmx device driver first appeared in OpenBSD 5.5 and was ported for
     NetBSD 7.0.


AUTHORS

     The vmx driver was originally written by Tsubai Masanari.  NetBSD porting
     was done by Hikaru ABE <hikaru@NetBSD.org>.

NetBSD 10.99                     June 7, 2014                     NetBSD 10.99