vmknic - TOE=False - Dell R710

[NSITPS]

A number of dell R710's were bought with TOE enabled - However when configuring VMkernal ports for iSCSI I noticed that TOE is set to false when running:

esxcli swiscsi nic list -d vmhba33

There is no option to enable TOE from esxcfg-vmknic

I have checked in the bios on these systems and TOE is enabled - Does anyone have any ideas regarding this?

[sjourney]

Got the same here, any ideas?

[AndreTheGiant]

Which version of ESX are you using?

Current version does not support TOE.

Actually only a limited function is provided:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006143

Andre

[NSITPS]

No, I installed windows 2008 with the broadcom suite to check out what was enabled and what wasn't by default. TOE was enabled.

If you use ethtool -k (from ESX COS) this states that no offload info is available - Using ethtool -K (upper case) you can enable a number of parameters, however I am unsure of which is which. I tried to cross reference the parameters within the broadcom suite to help but there was no exact match for TOE.

If you or anyone else knows what parameters are what using ethtool please post here as I can;t find any info out there at all and looks very like TOE etc is not enabled!!!!.....

Also note, I checked with ethtool against an IBM x3650 M2 and it gave the same results - It looks to me as if TOE needs to be enabled within ESX as it is not by default???

I may open a call up with VMware if nobody can offer any help.

[NSITPS]

Sorry Andre - I posted at the same time as you....

I am using ESX 4.0 U1 with all patches to date..

[AndreTheGiant]

As I have written on official stable versions there isn't yet the hardware TOE support.

Not sure on the next versions (but seems that it can be).

Andre

[NSITPS]

So let me get this right

You can enable TSO within a VM with vmxnet3 – It should be enabled on a vmkernal interface by default, however there is not hardware offload support? If this is the case what is the point in using it? – Sorry if I am missing something here but does this not mean the ESX server CPU is doing all the work, this is the case anyway without enabling TSO????

Thanks

[J1mbo]

Correct, only receive checksum offload is supported so far it seems, as reported by ethtool -k vmnic[x].

[NSITPS]

Referring to the KB Andre posted http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006143 - It states:

*If you are using TSO in a guest, and the NICs installed in the host do not support it, then the Ethernet frames are segmented in the VMkernel and sent to the NIC that way*

This suggests that if the NICs support it then hardware offload is available?

[AlbertWT]

That's true mate, I'm using Power Edge 2950 with additional Intel Pro 1000 MT with TOE support and yes it is not supported even with the current ESXi 4 since 3.5

The TOE driver CD is only usable when you use it under physical Windows Server install (eg. installing iSCSI initiator).

Kind Regards,

AWT

[NSITPS]

So the VMware documentation is worng (or should I say gives the wrong impression)? - Hardware offload is defiantly not supported?

Cheers

[J1mbo]

Supported, yes.

Used, no, except for rx checksum.

Please award points to any useful answer.