Mellanox NIC ESXi Management Tools

nmlxcli tools is a Mellanox esxcli command line extension for ConnectX®-3 onwards drivers’ management for ESXi 6.0 and later.

This tool enables querying of Mellanox NIC and driver properties directly from driver / firmware.

Once the tool bundle is installed (see “Installing nmlxcli” section below), a new NameSpace named 'mellanox' will be available when executing main #esxcli command, containing additional nested NameSpaces and available commands for each NameSpace.

For general information on 'esxcli' commands usage, syntax, NameSpaces and commands, refer to the VMware vSphere Documentation Center:

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-65/topic/com.vmware.vcli.getstart.doc/GUID-CDD49A32- 91DB-454D-8603-3A3E4A09DC59.html

During 'nmlxcli' commands execution, most of the output is formatted using the standard esxcli formatter, thus if required, the option of overriding the standard formatter used for a given command is available, for example:

Executing 'esxcli --formatter=xml mellanox uplink list' produces XML output of given command.

For general information on esxcli generated output formatter, refer to the VMware vSphere Documentation Center:

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-65/topic/com.vmware.vcli.examples.doc/GUID-227F889B-3EC0-48F2-85F5-BF5BD3946AA9.html

Warning

The current implementation does not support private statistics output formatting.

Warning

In case of execution failure, the utility will prompt to standard output or/and log located at '/var/log/syslog.log'.

Mellanox 'nmlxcli' tool is compatible with ConnectX-4 onward driver.

nmlxcli installation is performed as standard offline bundle.

To install nmlxcli:

image2019-7-16_15-21-9.png

  1. Run

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    esxcli software vib install -d <path_to_nmlxcli_extension_bun- dle.zip>

    For general information on updating ESXi from a zip bundle, refer to the VMware vSphere Documentation Center:

    https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-65/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.upgrade.doc/GUID- 22A4B153-CB21-47B4-974E-2E5BB8AC6874.html

  2. For the new Mellanox namespace to function:

  • Restart the ESXi host daemon.

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    /etc/init.d/hostd restart

    or

  • reboot ESXi host.

© Copyright 2023, NVIDIA. Last updated on Aug 31, 2023.