First let me explain the setup:
5 identical vmware hosts,
- IBM 3650 M3, 2x 2.67ghz (6 cores per proc), 152gb ram, vmware enterprise plus licenses, 2 nics for management traffic, 4 nics for guests, 2 for vmotion
Storage array: IBM v7000 FC San (with 2 FC switches)
All machines are on Windows 2008 R2, in my test setup i do not have a virusscanner installed,just a windows installation, fully patched.
After the initial installation i've noticed performance issues when i copied a file to a guest VM.
The Problem: If i copied a big file (in example 4gb) over the gigabit network from a physical machine to a virtual guest, the file starts copying with 700/800mbit, after a few (seems random) seconds communication stops, nothing is copied, no network traffic is flowwing, and starts after a few seconds again.
I've had this problem on Host1, after a discussion with the installation consultant, he reinstalled the host and the problem went away, i havent seen the problem in the last 3 months.
3 weeks ago i've updated the vmware hosts to the latest build (5.0.0 768111). After the update Host2 started having the same issues as i had with host1.
I decided to put the machine in maintenance mode and went for a holiday. Today i've picked up the problem again. I've downloaded the latest IBM firmware/bios and updated the bios, nic, storage controller.... Downloaded a new vmware esxi cd (didnt wanna update, but start from scratch) and reinstalled the host (5.1.0 799733). I've done the same test... tried to copy a big file from a physical host onto a virtual guest... file copied at 700/800mbit ... data stopped flowing for a few secconds ... data started copying again.. (See attached image)
The problem remained.
Then i've vmotioned the guest to another virtual host, did the same test... problem went away.
I'm not sure where to start looking, does anybody has an idea?
Thanks
