Introduction

Mellanox ConnectX®-4 onwards NATIVE ESXi is a software stack which operates across all Mellanox network adapter solutions supporting up to 200 Gb/s Ethernet (ETH) and 2.5 or 5.0 GT/s PCI Express 2.0 and 3.0 uplinks to servers.

The following sub-sections briefly describe the various components of the Mellanox ConnectX- 4 onwards NATIVE ESXi stack.

nmlx5 is the low-level driver implementation for the ConnectX-4/ConnectX-5 adapter cards designed by Mellanox Technologies. ConnectX-4/ConnectX-5 adapter cards can operate as an InfiniBand adapter, or as an Ethernet NIC. The ConnectX-4/ConnectX-5 NATIVE ESXi driver supports Ethernet NIC configurations exclusively.

Software Components

MLNX-NATIVE-ESX-ConnectX-4/ConnectX-5 contains the following software components:

• Mellanox Host Channel Adapter Drivers

  • nmlx5_core (Ethernet): Handles Ethernet specific functions and plugs into the ESXi uplink layer

  • nmlx5_rdma: Enables RoCE functionality by plugging into the ESXi RDMA layer