ESXi supports RDMA capable network adapters, for example, Mellanox Technologies MT27700 Family ConnectX-4. After you install such adapter on your host, the vSphere Client displays its two components, an RDMA adapter and a physical network adapter.

You can use the vSphere Client to view the RDMA adapter and its corresponding network adapter.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to the ESXi host.
  2. Under Networking, click RDMA adapters.
    In this example, the RDMA adapter appears on the list as vmrdma0. The Paired Uplink column displays the network component as the vmnic1 physical network adapter.

    The RDMA adapter appears on the list as vmrdma0. The Paired Uplink column displays the network component as the vmnic1 physical network adapter.

  3. To verify the description of the adapter, select the RDMA adapter from the list, and click the Properties tab.

Results

You can use the vmnic# network component of the adapter for such storage configurations as iSER or NVMe over RDMA. For the iSER configuration steps, see Configure iSER with ESXi. For information about NVMe over RDMA, see Configure Adapters for NVMe over RDMA (RoCE v2) Storage.