Virtual functions

Virtual functions allow for sharing I/O devices by allocating a logical I/O hardware device to a virtual machine (VM). Virtual functions provide a mechanism by which a single Ethernet port can appear to be multiple separate physical devices, each containing the resources necessary for I/O operations. Single root, I/O virtualization (SR-IOV)-capable devices provide configurable numbers of independent virtual functions, each with its own configuration space. You can assign one or more virtual functions to a virtual machine.

Single networks, network sets, tunneled networks, and untagged networks are supported as virtualized functions.

To take advantage of this capability, the server BIOS must support virtual functions and must be configured to enable this feature.