VM NIC Question

[WillWally]

I have 31 VM's spreadout over 4 ESX hosts in Cluster1. All hosts are ESXi 5.1  and are at the current patch level. The virtual hardware on all VM's is current. The VM's seem to have a mixture of NIC's. Most likely when they were created. Some VM's have the E1000E NIC. Some have the VMXNET 3 NIC. Would it make sense to reconfigure each VM to use the VMXNET 3 NIC?

[markdjones82]

There is significant performance improvements when moving to the VMXNET3, but if you aren't seeing any issues it probably is ok to leave as is and just change as you refresh.

If you found this helpful, please respond so

[jagdish_rana]

Hi,

May I know please, Are these VM operating system support vmext3 driver?

Are you facing any network glitch in VM network? If No then leave it. Change will take down time and reconfigure the IP settings.

[Ribcap]

I personally would consider upgrading them (if compatible) to VMXNET3.  VMXNET3 is VMware's best practice for a reason.  It simply outperforms the other adapters in not only throughput, but CPU utilization (in most cases).  The VMXNET3 adapter requires VMware Tools to be installed as the driver is not included in most OS's.  This could explain why E1000E's were used instead. 

To upgrade, you could use a script, but could run into issues such as ghost NIC's on Windows VM's.  I would rather take them one by one and remove the existing NIC, reboot, add the VMXNET3, and re-IP the server.  You also need to be aware that the MAC address will change if you have apps tied to MACs....

Jamie