File transfer (SCP) is slow when transferring a directory/files from a VMware ESX 3.5 server to a linux backup server.

[lionshawn]

When connected by SSH to my VMware ESX 3.5 server, no virtual images running. I attempted to SCP (file transfer) a directory containing a virtual image to my backup server (a linux server with nothing happening on it at the time of transfer) and the file transfer works great but I get an extremely slow transfer rate. On average, the transfer is about 9.5MB/s (this is about 76Mbps) which is pretty bad considering I have a 1Gbps link between both servers, I would expect that for a 100Mbps link (no other traffic is flowing on the switch between them). I can only think that ESX Server 3.5 is some how throttling me down. Is this possible? Or is there any other explanation for this? Is there anyway to speed this type of transfer up? I hear the newer ESX 4.0 is in general faster than ESX 3.5, would upgrading help me out in this particular situation?

[Texiwill]

Hello,

All reads and writes are throttled by the vmkernel when you make them from the SC. THis is to keep a runaway SC process from eating your disk space.

You may want to use FastSCP from Veeam or the vzboost stuff from VizionCore. They both speed up transfers somewhat, but not greatly.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009

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