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tdubb123
Expert
Expert

what nic type to use?

what nic type should i be using on vsphere? flexible, vmxnet3, vmxnet2 or e1000?

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mcowger
Immortal
Immortal

vmxnet3 has the highest performance but requires drivers.

sometimes flexible can be nice for deployments (starts out as e1000 and becomes vmxnet2 when tools get installed

e1000 is probably the most compatible.

We use flex.






--Matt

VCP, vExpert, Unix Geek

--Matt VCDX #52 blog.cowger.us
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Jain
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Check below doc for detailed performance details

Cheers,

~ Jain

~ Do not forget about points,if you found answer useful Smiley Wink

--------------------------------- *Jain* | VCP4 | +Please award points, if you found answer useful+
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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

You can use vmxnet2 or vmxnet3 (in this second case there are some problems).

See also:

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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LucasAlbers
Expert
Expert

We have had huge discussions on this topic.

For most purposes flexible is a good choice as it is supported and easy to deploy, and performance is close to vmxnet 3.

On heavy utilization machines you might use vmxnet2 or vmxne3.

I think vmxnet3 would be the buggiest as it is a relatively new release.

On linux p2v converstion I used flexible, as changing the adapter after the conversion was a pain.

We use vmxnet2 for windows xp, vmxnet3 for windows 2008 r2, vmxet3 for linux x64, flexible for linux.

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