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mopox
Contributor
Contributor

Datastore network throughput not desirable

Hi,

i am running an ESXi box on an Intel S5000PSL board with an SRCSAS18E connected to 4 SAS harddrives and 2 SATA harddrives. The SAS harddrives are enclosed in a RAID5 the SATA harddrives are enclosed in a RAID1. Both are different Virtual Disk Groups (VD0, VD1).

First of all i'ld like to know how to monitor the raid controller? Is there a possibility to Install Intels Web Raid Console2 or somethink similar? What about SNMP? Am I able to get the state of the raid controller from ESXi directly? Hidden agenta, is that i wane have an email when a drive fails.

Second, what is wrong with my config when the datastore of ESXi just offers a throughput of 100MBIT (around 10MB by graph and time) while the whole network infrastructure is GBITfrom the server NICs over the switch up to the client NIC? I have to copy a huge amount of data. GBIT throughput would be much more helpful here. I also validated the throughput issue by using another GBIT client. It did show the same result.

regards

Mirko

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java_cat33
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hi - To answer a few of your questions.... SNMP is only available with ESXi if you have the correct licensing, and agents cannot be installed within ESXi.

The below KB will provide further info for you...

KB1006543

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mopox
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for your KB. I am consider about to suggest my customer to purchase VI Enterprise. But first i have to prove him that the whole story is runing. So I have to use the free stuff. I read a couple of threads about the bad throughput of the datastore. Closely it seems as there is still some problem with free VI. I wonder it is slowed down by purpose and i'ld understand that for the free edition. May someone commit that? Do I get better throughput when i purchase the whole story?

I still have another problem. For deploying the ESXi we had to save the original old messy windows system which we take over by our forrunner. To achieve that, we converted the original system to a VMWare image and run it temporarly at a GSX2 on secondary temporarly Hardware. Now when the ESXi is setup and the new systems are installed. The old one should go back to the ESXi, temporarly, up to when the new systems are fully setup. For that i started a conversion with vmware-vdiskmanager from the GSX2 on Friday (GMT+1). Still, the conversion is working to 76%, the storage size is something about 580GB. Now, I am concerned about getting ready while copying the whole disk over the network (bad throughput). Coz, on monday at 8:00 am the old system have to run properly and the customer like to work again (20 clients) then. Is there a chance to copy the file directly? I mean i think about to connect the harddrive to one of the internal controllers and copy the vmdk directly. Is ESXi able to read the NTFS filesystem? Or might it be able while copy it manualy with booting another instand Linux system? What Linux system has VMFS support?

Thank you for your suggestions.

Mirko

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

I read a couple of threads about the bad throughput of the datastore. Closely it seems as there is still some problem with free VI. I wonder it is slowed down by purpose and i'ld understand that for the free edition. May someone commit that? Do I get better throughput when i purchase the whole story?

The free edition is not throttled for performance. The issues that I have seen are with slow copy performance using the datastore browser - is that what you're referring to?

I mean i think about to connect the harddrive to one of the internal controllers and copy the vmdk directly. Is ESXi able to read the NTFS filesystem? Or might it be able while copy it manualy with booting another instand Linux system? What Linux system has VMFS support?

ESXi is not able to natively mount an NTFS partition, you could try a mapping the partition as a generic SCSI device into a VM or take a look at this - http://communities.vmware.com/thread/171308?tstart=0 / http://communities.vmware.com/thread/177291?tstart=0

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Lorenzodm
Contributor
Contributor

To solve slow throughput go to VMWare Infrastructure Client > Configuration > Networking > Properties of Management Network > Edit Management Network > Enable VMotion

With this check troughtput go to 100% on 100Mbit LAN and 25% on 1Gbit LAN.

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WimKerkhoff
Contributor
Contributor

With or without VMotion enabled on the management network interface, I only get 10 Mbps on a 1000 Mbps connection...

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