20.23. Adding Multifunction PCI Devices to KVM Guest Virtual Machines

To add a multi-function PCI device to a KVM guest virtual machine:
  1. Run the virsh edit guestname command to edit the XML configuration file for the guest virtual machine.
  2. In the <address> element, add a multifunction='on' attribute. This enables the use of other functions for the particular multifunction PCI device. 
    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
<driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='none'/>
<source file='/var/lib/libvirt/images/rhel62-1.img'/>
<target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/>
<address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x05' function='0x0' multifunction='on'/>
</disk>
    For a PCI device with two functions, amend the XML configuration file to include a second device with the same slot number as the first device and a different function number, such as function='0x1'. For Example: 
    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
<driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='none'/>
<source file='/var/lib/libvirt/images/rhel62-1.img'/>
<target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/>
<address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x05' function='0x0' multifunction='on'/>
</disk>
<disk type='file' device='disk'>
<driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='none'/>
<source file='/var/lib/libvirt/images/rhel62-2.img'/>
<target dev='vdb' bus='virtio'/>
<address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x05' function='0x1'/>
</disk>
  3. Run the lspci command. The output from the KVM guest virtual machine shows the virtio block device: 
    $ lspci

00:05.0 SCSI storage controller: Red Hat, Inc Virtio block device
00:05.1 SCSI storage controller: Red Hat, Inc Virtio block device

    Note

    The SeaBIOS application runs in real mode for compatibility with BIOS interfaces. This limits the amount of memory available. As a consequence, SeaBIOS is only able to handle a limited number of disks. Currently, the supported number of disks is:
    • virtio-scsi — 64
    • virtio-blk — 4
    • ahci/sata — 24 (4 controllers with all 6 ports connected)
    • usb-storage — 4
    As a workaround for this problem, when attaching a large number of disks to your virtual machine, make sure that your system disk has a small pci slot number, so SeaBIOS sees it first when scanning the pci bus. It is also recommended to use the virtio-scsi device instead of virtio-blk as the per-disk memory overhead is smaller.