Server 2008R2 virtual NIC drivers

[schlipac]

Hi, I am having some issues with File Services and large file copies failing on Windows Server 2008R2 on 4i..

I have noticed that there are two drivers:

E1000 on some of our VM's our older 2008R2-migrated-from 3.5 U4 Hosts - hardware version 4.

And vmxnet3 in harwdare version 7 (newly deployed 2008R2 VM's on 4i).

So we are getting a lot of Event ID 2012 srv errors on our main file server and at those times large file copies fail.

Some of the (MS) KB and discussions point to disabling offload in the NIC settings to deal with this - but this is 2008 (non-R2 2008 version - either 32bit or 64bt)

Does anyone know the definitive NIC driver and hardware version best for use for Server 2008R2 Standard for File servers?

Or settings recommended be set on either E1000 or vmxnet3 NIC's?

TIA.

[schlipac]

Found this MS article - although for earlier Win versions.

Anyone have experience with MTU settings? I remember this was discussed for earlier versions of ESX, anything more on MTU and NIC settings and Win2008R2?

Our Cisco 1GB switches support 1500MTU, and 10G switched core supports Jumbo frames.

So on our vmxnet3 ("VM Version 7") adapter all Off load settings are disabled (following various MS KB recommendations and other forums - but old info) to treat this Event ID, and Jumbo Packet adapter settting is set to Standard 1500... but still we get this Event ID and client file copy errors....

[AntonVZhbankov]

VMXNET3 for highly loaded servers for sure

---

MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[schlipac]

Thanks Anton, yes this is the first node in a 2008R2 file cluster - we expect 1000's of simulataneous connections per day, and perhaps hourly.

Can you point me to any discussion on vNIC's for 2008R2 VM's on ESX4.01/4i?

TIA

[AntonVZhbankov]

There is no actually any recommended NIC for 2008R2. All OSes have the same issues.

VMXNET3 is most advanced and fastest NIC, but it has no some features. For example you can not use it for WDS installations.

---

MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[AndreTheGiant]

The vmxnet3 is the new and faster driver.

See also this document:

Andre

[JimmyWhite]

Schlipac,

Did you ever manage to fix this? We have four Windows 2008 R2 file servers running on VSphere 4.0 U2 and have the same issue. 2012 errors being reported in the event log and the odd file copy failure.

I have been working with Microsoft on this and have so far not really got anywhere. We have tried:

     Disabling all the offload settings on the NIC

     Using the E1000 driver instead of the VMXNET3

     Defrag all volumes

     Upped the RAM to 4GB

     Given the server four vCPU's

     Sent Wireshark logs to MS

MS keep saying the issue is on the underlying hardware however we are not so sure.

Did you make any progress on fixing this?

Cheers

Jimmy