VMXNet3 Nic in Windows 2003 Enterprise and MS Initiator

[Ian78118]

Hi All,

All my VMs on ESX 4 are Version 7 Hardware. Should I be using vmxnet3 nics throughout (all server 2003), do these virtual nics work ok where I have demanding VMs where I am using the guest ms initiator to talk direct to iscsi storage? - Anyone else using this setup?

Also should I now be using the pvscsi driver for data access on all my vms? - Im not using FT.

I had assumed when creating your vms that it would automatically select the high end nics and scsi drivers by default when the guest os supports them - but it seems not.

TIA

[AndreTheGiant]

You could use vmxnet2 or vmxnet3. Both support Jumbo Frame and some offload feature.

The vmxnet3 is the new version and has also other new features (like VLAN tagging).

For more info see:

For the SCSI controller (IMHO) it doesn't matter. I will be uses only for your C: disks.

Andre

[VMmatty]

I would stick with the vmxnet3 driver for your VMs. It is the latest enhanced NIC driver and includes all of the features of vmxnet2 (and more). Modify your template so that all of your VMs are using it unless there is a specific reason not to.

I agree with Andre about the PVSCSI driver and don't see a real need to use it just for boot volumes. And VMware doesn't support using PVSCSI on boot volumes anyway...

[Ian78118]

Thanks both for your replies.

Ill change my VMs to use this driver be interesting to see if notice a difference in performance and cpu/memory consumption compared to the E1000 Nic

[mats82]

check kb article 1001805

it states that server 2003 is not a supported OS for vmxnet 2 or 3!!

[skoch]

mats82, it looks like the article your referenced was updated yesterday, 2/4/2010, and now shows that VMXNET3 is supported for all versions of Win2K3 for both 32 and 64-bit.