The following table explains about the driver and NIC information for KVM installation in SR-IOV mode.

Explanation

Comments

Drivers and Supported NICs

Virtual network functions created from physical NIC

Allows physical NICs to be shared amongst VMs without sacrificing performance, since packets are switched in the hardware.

Maximum 32 virtual functions (VFs) can be configured per pNIC.

ixgbe-vf driver supports these NICs (and bonding): 10Gb NICs 82599, X520, X540, X550, X552.

i40e-vf driver supports these NICs (bonding not supported): 10Gb NICs X710, 40Gb NICs XL710.