A function that is associated with a Physical Function. A VF is a lightweight PCIe function that shares one or more physical resources with the Physical Function and with other VFs that are associated with the same PF. A VF driver exhibits the following characteristics:
Visible in both the root domain and I/O domain
Can initiate communication with its PF either through the HW mailbox or an OS–provided interface
Not visible in the root domain until the following conditions are satisfied:
The root domain has booted up
The PF driver attaches and invokes the configuration of the VF
The VFs are enabled by the root domain's Oracle Solaris IOV framework
The system firmware allocates resources to the VFs
Not visible in the I/O Domain until the following conditions are satisfied:
VFs are already enabled and are visible in the root domain
VFs are assigned to the I/O Domain
VFs are probed in the I/O Domain by the Oracle Solaris firmware (OBP)
mac-addr
vlan (Virtual LAN) ID
port-vlan-id
alt-mac-addrs
mtu