ESXI 5.1 and network performance issues

[Joshn]

Hi all,

I have the following MoBo: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z9PED8_WS/#specifications

And this quad gig port Ethernet controller: Intel E1G44ET PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet Quad Port Server Adapter - Newegg.com

Now my problem is when ever a VM starts generating a lot of network traffic it just starts using up lots of CPU time.

I have enabled on my MoBo Intel I/OAT but this doesn't seem to have helped anything.

Can someone please help me trouble shoot these network performance issues?

Thanks.

Josh

[prabuvmware]

Can you paste your network configs?

1. How the mgmt traffic is configured?

2.How ur vMotion traffic is configured?

3. How is ur VM traffic managed and etc? Also, what the N.w policies are set in ut env??

[Joshn]

I am fairly new to this btw but I will try to answer your questions.

Paste my network config?  Want a screen shot?

1: Management traffic goes over a dedicated 1GB NIC (one of the MoBo NICs)

2: vMotion traffic (this is for failover and migration right?) that is just on another 1GB NIC from the quad gig card.  This also does all the iSCSI traffic.

3: VM traffic is not really managed as such.  All the VMs are connected to 1 Vswitch which goes to one 1GB NIC on the Quad Card.

[Joshn]

here is a screen shot:

[Sreejesh_D]

Please check the processes running at VM when you observe high network utilization. There are chances the application/OS process is the reason behind high CPU utilization. Network packet burst will be just a result of it.

For example in a tomcat webserver, the process tomecat will use high cpu when there is a lot of hits. In this case both CPU and Network utilization will be high.

[Sreejesh_D]

since you have 4 nics i would suggest the following design to offer redundancy.

vmotion, management network and VM network in same switch "vSwitch0" with uplinks vmnic0 and vmnic3.

And vSwitch1 with up links vmnic4 and vmnic5 dedicated for iSCSI.

[Joshn]

@ Yezdi - I checked and there is some cpu usage but not anywhere near the amount being reported by the ESXI host.

I just feel that my CPU is doing all the packet switching rather than the NICs?