State down of PVRDMA adapter

Hello,

I am trying to setup a Distributed Switch with 4 VMs using the RDMA feature without a HCA adapter on the same Hypervisor with ESXi 6.5 Update 2 (earlier fix for this kind of problem should be included).

The VMs are running Redhat RHEL Linux 64-bit with kernel 3.10 and hardware level 13. The PVRDMA adapter is recognized by the OS in all 4 VMs.

When running ibstat -v the State is set to "Down":

CA 'vmw_pvrdma0'

    CA type: VMW_PVRDMA-1.0.1.0-k

    Number of ports: 1

    Firmware version: 1.0.0

    Hardware version: 1

    Node GUID: 0x00505600008b4b52

    System image GUID: 0x0000000000000000

    Port 1:

        State: Down

        Physical state: LinkUp

        Rate: 2.5

        Base lid: 0

        LMC: 0

        SM lid: 0

        Capability mask: 0x04010000

        Port GUID: 0x025056fffe8b4b52

        Link layer: Ethernet

Running sminfo fails with:

ibwarn: [33392] mad_rpc_open_port: client_register for mgmt 1 failed

sminfo: iberror: failed: Failed to open '(null)' port '0'

Any idea, why the State is "Down" or if any additional undocumented steps need to be performed for the PVRDMA adapter when no HCA adapter is used?

Thank you.