VMWare 6.7 Routing Table

[rcbrown1]

Im having issues with network speed on my virtual servers. They are only getting 1000mbps when i believe i should be getting 2500mbps. My network setup is below.

I have an esxi host with a 10GB network card that i have segmented out into 3 separate networks; Management/Vmotion, iSCI and VM Network

Management - 10.0.0.x (1000mbps shared with vmotion)

Vmotion - 1.1.1.x (1000mbps shared with management)

iSCI - 10.0.100.x (6500mbps)

VM Network - 10.0.0.x (2500mbps - all vm's mapped to here within vsphere using VMXNET 3)

I also have 4 port groups relating to networks above, 3 Virtual switches (management and vmotion going to same switch)

This is where i get confused. I have 3 VMkernels. vmk0 - Management Network | Default TCP/IP stack | Management Services. vmk1 - iSCI Network | Default TCP/IP stack | no services checked and vmk2 - vMotion | Default TCP/IP stack | vMotion Services. Now when i look at the Default routing table im getting:

0.0.0.0/0 - 10.0.0.200(gateway) - vmk0

1.1.1.0/24 - 0.0.0.0 - vmk2

10.0.0.0/24 - 0.0.0.0 - vmk0

10.0.100.0/24 - 0.0.0.0 vm1

Because the routing table shows 10.0.0.0/24 using vmk0, does this mean my vm's will only get 1000mbps even though i have their network adaptors mapped to the VM network at 2500mbps? if so how do i fix this? 

[depping]

VM traffic doesn't take the ESXi routing table in to consideration.

[rcbrown1]

okay good to know,

then how come my vm's get a max of 1000mbps transfer speed even when transferring between other vm's? 

[depping]

I don't know why that is, that could be a multitude of different things. But if you go to the host, you can use ESXTOP to figure out which NIC is being used, that should show you directly if the correct NIC is used or not. And if it is configured, on the vSphere side, as you say it is, the 2500Mbps nic should be used.

[rcbrown1]

not too familiar with ESXTOP.

However i will give it a try in the morning and update here.

thanks depping

[depping]

Okay, you can also look at the vCenter Server UI, just go to the Host, Monitor, Advanced. Then at chart options select the Networking metrics. Push the traffic for the VM, and you should see the correct vmnic spike.

[rcbrown1]

turns out ESXTOP is a very useful tool. once i ran the command i pressed n to bring up the network settings.

when copying between my VM's im getting just under 2500mbps, when copying to my external servers which have 10Gb uplinks as well directly into my en4093r switches im only getting 1000mbps. looking at esxtop i can see when copying externally im  bottlenecked by the management vswitch. 

i also checked with vSphere UI to look at the traffic. a lot of traffic is going to/from my iSCI network however no where close to 6500mbps and we full load at time of writing this. so i may do some testing on a spare node where i take some of the 6500mbps and re allocate to the 1000mbps network to see if i can increase file transfers to/from file servers.

thank you for your help

[depping]

No problem!