Virtual server NIC speed

[_ol]

Hello,

I noticed that some servers we have in VMware have a 10Mbps nic speed. These servers use different older driver: PCNet Family PCI Ethernet Adapter version 4.38.0.0 10/1/2002. The other servers have a 1Gbps nic speed and are using driver: VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter version 2.0.0.8 4/11/2006 and some use the 2.0.0.9 driver.

In my opinion i need to change the Virtual machine driver. Is this correct? Can i just download the latest driver from VMware? Or is the driver already present somewhere? I cannot change the driver within the production hours, so i'm not able to just try it.

Any suggestions?

Kind regards,

Roland

[ac57846]

Hi Roland,

The VM's whose NICs report AMD Lance & 10Mbps don't have the VMWare Tools installed, the tools include the VMWare drivers. You can install the tools using the "Install VMware Tools" option from the VI Client's VM menu. You'll need to logon to the VM console and allow the install to proceed.

Al.

[admin]

Hi,

You can't just change the driver.You need to have the VMWare Tools installed in order to use the vmxnet driver. You should be using this driver anyway, it is better of the two and has better overall performance for the virtual machine. Install the vmware tools sing the "Install VMware Tools" option from the VI Client's VM menu

Greetz

Tom

[_ol]

The VMWare tools are already installed. I found that the vmxnet driver is under C:\Program Files\VMWare\VMware Tools\Drivers\vmxnet\ and is newer. So i asume that the driver just needs to be updated to the vmxnet driver, am i correct?

Kind regards,

Roland

[ac57846 · Accepted solution]

If the tools are up to date then yes you could manually upgrade the driver to the one inside the guest.

Alternatively present the tools iso (/vmimiages/iso/windows.iso on the ESX server from memory) and upgrade the driver from there.

Al.

[_ol]

Thanks! I'm going to schedule this update for next week and just point to the vmxnet drivers under the vmware tools directory under the program files.

Roland

[crush]

FYI:

We have also such servers which dispaly 10Mbps Network Speed in the Microsoft Windows GUI. But in real they operate at 1Gbps (You can test this by copy a file over the network to/from the VM).

crush