: Enable DPDK on ESXi
Focus
Focus

Enable DPDK on ESXi

Table of Contents

Enable DPDK on ESXi

The Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) enhances VM-Series performance by increasing network interface card (NIC) packet processing speed. On the VM-Series firewall, DPDK is enabled by default on ESXi.
To take advantage of DPDK, you must use a NIC with one of the supported DPDK drivers mentioned in DPDK Driver Versions:
If you disable DPDK, the NIC uses PacketMMap instead of DPDK. You can disable DPDK using the command set system setting dpdk-pkt-io off.
See the Compatibility Matrix for ESXi hypervisor support and PacketMMAP and DPDK driver support by PAN-OS version.