How to enable SR-IOV virtual function on Intel ixgbe NIC

Last updated on July 21, 2020 by Dan Nanni

SR-IOV is a technology which allows a single PCIe (PCI Express) device to emulate multiple separate PCIe devices. The emulated PCIe functions are called "virtual functions" (VFs), while the original PCIe device functions are called "physical functions" (PFs). SR-IOV is typically used in I/O virtualization environment, where a single PCIe device needs to be shared among multiple virtual machines.

Method One

To enable SR-IOV VF on Intel ixgbe NIC, you need to pass an additional parameter "max_vfs=N" to ixgbe kernel module, where N is the number of VFs to create per port. To pass this parameter:

On Ubuntu, Debian or Linux Mint:

To enable SR-IOV VF on ixgbe NIC driver on Debian-based system:

$ sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/ixgbe.conf

options ixgbe max_vfs=8

On CentOS, Fedora or RHEL:

To enable SR-IOV VF on ixgbe NIC driver on Red-Hat-based system:

$ sudo vi /etc/modprobe.conf

options ixgbe max_vfs=8

Finally, reboot the machine to activate VFs.

To check if SR-IOV VF is successfully enabled, use the following command.

$ lspci | grep -i ethernet

The Ethernet interfaces labeled with "Virtual Function" are VF interfaces.

Method Two

If the above method fails to enable VFs, another method is to add "ixgbe.max_vfs=N" as a kernel boot parameter via GRUB. Refer to this tutorial for detailed instructions for that. After updating GRUB configuration, verify that the GRUB configuration file (/boot/grub/grub.cfg or /boot/grub/grub.conf) includes this parameter.

Go ahead and reboot to activate the change.

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