The following new features are noted in the drivers shipped with UEK R5:

• VXLAN offload support on Mellanox CX-5 HCAs

  The mlx5e driver has added netdev support for VXLAN tunneling. This feature reduces CPU overhead by offloading packet processing for VXLAN encapsulation to the HCA hardware directly. This reduces system load for VXLAN tunneling, improves performance and reduces packet throughput.

• Hyper-V drivers updated

  The Hyper-V storage driver, hv_storvsc, has been updated to provide performance improvements for I/O operations on certain workloads by eliminating bounce buffers. The Hyper-V network driver, hv_netvsc, has been updated to support transparent SR-IOV on Virtual Function devices to reduce configuration complexity and the use of a dedicated bonding driver and script to handle hot plugging of the required PCI devices.

  A large number of other upstream patches from the 4.15 and 4.16 Linux kernel versions have been backported to deliver a full range of expected functionality and features for Hyper-V on UEK R5.

• QLogic QEDF 25/40/50/100Gb FCoE driver added

  The QLogic QEDF 25/40/50/100Gb FCoE driver, qedf, has been added to the driver modules included in this kernel release. The driver introduces FCoE support for QLogic 41000 Series Converged Network Adapters.

• FC-NVMe transport support for Emulex and QLogic devices enabled

  The NVM Express drivers, nvme, have been patched and updated to support enabling NVMe over Fibre Channel fabrics. This change involved the addition of several new nvme modules, updates to other modules, such as the Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel SCSI driver, lpfc and modifications to kernel block layer code such as the multi-queue block I/O queueing mechanism. Note that this functionality is currently available as a technical preview. Hardware vendors are responsible for testing and supporting FC-NVMe transport for their own devices. For more information on FC-NVMe support for your hardware, please contact your hardware vendor.

• Broadcom/Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel SCSI driver updated to 12.0.0.2

  The Broadcom/Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel SCSI driver, lpfc has been updated to version 12.0.0.2. This release adds support for Emulex 32/64GB Host Bus Adapters and the initial framework to enable NVMe on Fibre Channel. Note that FC-NVMe in lpfc is available as a technical preview.

• QLogic Fibre Channel HBA driver updated to 10.00.00.06-k1

  The QLogic Fibre Channel HBA driver, qla2xxx has been updated to version 10.00.00.06-k1. Changes include many bug fixes for stability and performance. This release also includes a large number of vendor supplied and upstream patches to enable NVMe on Fibre Channel. Note that FC-NVMe in qla2xxx is available as a technical preview.

• LSI MPT Fusion SAS 3.0 device driver updated

  The LSI MPT Fusion SAS 3.0 device driver, mpt3sas, has been patched and updated to support NVMe drives and to add support for the Broadcom SAS3616 HBA. Other upstream patches have also been applied for bug fixes.

• Amazon Elastic Network Adapter driver updated to 1.5.0k

  The Elastic Network Adapter driver, ena, has been updated to version 1.5.0k. This version provides a number of upstream bug fixes and improvements. Additional features include additional power management operations, initial support for IPv6 RSS and improved driver robustness.

• Avago MegaRAID SAS driver updated

  The Avago MegaRAID SAS driver, megaraid_sas, has been updated to version 07.704.04.00-rc1 and includes upstream and vendor supplied patches. Additional features include added support for the SAS3.5 generation of MegaRAID SAS controllers. Changes were also applied to cater for the potential to increase the adapter Queue Depth (QD) to 9k.

• Interface driver for GENEVE encapsulated traffic included

  The interface driver for GENEVE encapsulated traffic, geneve, is included in this release of the kernel. Although this driver is provided simply as part of the upstream code used by this kernel release, it is mentioned as its inclusion resolves a known issue in Oracle Linux 7.5.