The Direct I/O feature has been available for LDoms customers since LDoms2.0. Apart from the latest SR-IOV feature in LDoms2.2, it is worth noting a few enhancements to the Direct I/O feature. These are:
Support for Metis-Q and Metis-E cards.
These cards are highly requested for support and are worth mentioning because they are the only combo cards containing both FibreChannel and Ethernet in the same card. With this support, a customer can have both SAN storage and network access with just one card and one PCIe slot assigned to a logical domain. This reduces cost and helps when there are less number of slots in a given platform.
The following are the part numbers for these cards. I have tried to put the platforms on which each card is supported, but this information can get quickly outdated. The accurate information can be found at the Support Document.
Card Name
Part Number
Platforms
Metis-Q: StorageTek Dual 8Gb Fibre Channel Dual GbE ExpressModule HBA, QLogic
SG-XPCIEFCGBE-Q8-N
SPARC T3-4, T4-4
Metis-E: StorageTek Dual 8Gb Fibre Chanel Dual GbE ExpressModule HBA, Emulex
SG-XPCIEFCGBE-E8-N
SPARC T3-4, T4-4
Additional cards added to the portfolio of supported cards. This is mainly Powerville based Ethernet cards, the part numbers for these cards as below:
Part Number
Description
7100477
Sun Quad Port GbE PCI Express 2.0 Low Profile Adapter, UTP
7100481
Sun Dual Port GbE PCI Express 2.0 Low Profile Adapter, MMF
7100483
Sun Quad Port GbE PCI Express 2.0 ExpressModule, UTP
7110486
Sun Quad Port GbE PCI Express 2.0 ExpressModule, MMF
Note: Direct IO feature has a hard dependency on the Root domain(PCIe bus owner, here Primary domain). That is, rebooting the Root domain for any reason may impact the logical domains having PCIe slots assigned with Direct IO feature. So rebooting a root domain need to be carefully managed. Also apply the failure-policy settings as described in the admin guide and release notes to deal with unexpected cases.
