Intel® QuickAssist Technology Driver for VMware ESXi with Enhanced DirectPath I/O – Hardware Version 2.0

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

• Intel® Quick Assist Technology (Intel® QAT) is PCIe device that provides cryptographic and compression acceleration. It is a hardware accelerator integrated into the 4th Generation (formerly Sapphire Rapids), 5th Generation (formerly Emerald Rapids) Intel® Xeon® Scalable and Intel® Xeon® 6 (formerly Granite Rapids) Processors to improve performance and efficiency across the data center.
• This software enables Intel® QAT accelerator on VMware ESXi via Enhanced DirectPath I/O.
• Driver enables sharing of a Physical Function across multiple guest Virtual Machines (VM) using Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) technology. This is accomplished by exposing Intel® QAT accelerator as Virtual Functions (VFs) to a specific guest VM(s)
• Please note this is not a standard ESXi I/O kernel driver. It is used with Enhanced DirectPath I/O to access the device.
• VMware's certification of the Intel® QAT Driver verifies basic platform and device requirements for Enhanced DirectPath I/O, checking that the driver enables VDEVs correctly and that the VDEVs are exposed to the VM's guest operating system.
• The Enhanced DirectPath I/O certification test suite does not certify end-to-end functionality of the device. It is Intel's responsibility to support end users with end-to-end interoperability and functionality of the overall solution.

Note:

• Intel® QAT Driver for VMware ESXi with Enhanced DirectPath I/O is compatible only with ESXi 8.0 U3 and later versions.
• If previous versions of the driver were used, additional steps could be required for migration to latest driver – please refer to release notes for additional details.

Environment

ESXi 8.0 U3 and later versions

Resolution

Intel® QuickAssist Technology Driver for VMware ESXi is available on Intel® Download Center: Intel® QuickAssist Technology Driver for VMware ESXi* - Hardware Version 2.0

Customer Support

To submit an Intel® Premier Support (IPS) ticket, please go to https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/secure/my-intel/dashboard.html