Using NEO-Host on vm with SR-IOV

Infrastructure & Networking Software And Drivers SoC And SmartNIC
1

Currently, I am trying to install and use NEO-Host on a VM with a SR-IOV virtual function of an MLNX5 NIC. I installed NEO-Host successfully on the VM. However, I cannot get any device information with the neo-host-gui. Note that I have installed MLNXOFED and MFT on the VM already.

$ ibv_devinfo
hca_id: mlx5_0
        transport:                      InfiniBand (0)
        fw_ver:                         16.35.2000
        node_guid:                      0000:0000:0000:0000
        sys_image_guid:                 b8ce:f603:007f:47a8
        vendor_id:                      0x02c9
        vendor_part_id:                 4120
        hw_ver:                         0x0
        board_id:                       MT_0000000012
        phys_port_cnt:                  1
                port:   1
                        state:                  PORT_ACTIVE (4)
                        max_mtu:                4096 (5)
                        active_mtu:             1024 (3)
                        sm_lid:                 0
                        port_lid:               0
                        port_lmc:               0x00
                        link_layer:             Ethernet

But for mst:

$ mst status
MST modules:
------------
    MST PCI module is not loaded
    MST PCI configuration module is not loaded

PCI Devices:
------------

        No devices were found.

Does anyone have any ideas about this? Thank you very much!

2

Hi Luckyoung,

Thank you for posting your query on NVIDIA Community.

I would like to inform that we have the following known issue mentioned in latest version of NEO HOst 1.6.1

1064652 Description: When running on a VM with multiple Mellanox PCI
devices, NEO-Host may fail to identify them.
Workaround: N/A
Keywords: Virtual Machine

Please check if you have multiple Mellanox PCI devices.

Thanks,
Namrata.

3

Hi Namrata,

Thank you for your reply. Do you mean multiple Mellanox PCIe devices on the VM? Currently, I only pass through a device (VF) to the VM. So the VM should only have one PCIe device. Also, according to this post Passthrough the whole MLNX5 to a VM - #4 by spruitt, it seems that I cannot use the NEO-HOST software on a VM. Do I misunderstand something about the usage of NEO-HOST? Thank you.

Bests,
Luckyoung

4

Hi Luckyoung,

Neohost can run on VM. Not the performance script but the GUI itself.

Unfortunately, debugging the issue over the community forum will not be possible and a support ticket will need to be opened in order to investigate further which will require an active support entitlement. If there is an active contract in place, please feel free to open a support ticket by emailing enterprisesupport@nvidia.com

For details on contracts, please feel free to contact our contracts team at Networking-contracts@nvidia.com

Thanks,
Namrata.

5

Thank you for your advice.

Bests,
Luckyoung