Enabling SR-IOV feature in two places? Is it needed?

Hi all;

As you know, we can enable SR-IOV feature in two different places: 1) An external virtual switch and 2) In a Virtual NIC.

Now my questions are:

• Why we enable this feature in an external virtual switch, as by definition, this feature makes it possible to bypass the virtual networking stack in a guest?
• Can I only enable this feature in a vNIC, without configuring the corresponding vSwitch?

Thanks

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