VM network adapter best practices

[patrickbuller]

I'm trying to find best practices for which network adapter to use when creating virtual machines. I'm familiar with VMware KB 1001805, but I'm looking for specific recommendations for various scenarios. I'm curious specifically regarding various Windows OSs and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, but I'd love to see a document for other OSs as well. I just did a P2V conversion of 2003 R2 SP2 and it defaulted to Flexible, but it seems like a newer adapters should be used. Should one always use vmxnet3 or e1000? Or how does one know which network adapter to use?

Thanks for your help!

[AlbertWT]

Hi Patrick,

For all of the VM that I deployed I always use VMXNet 3 as it is the uses Paravirtual driver which directly communicate through the hypervisor layer ( low overhead ) rather than passing it on to the networking layer like the traditional vNIC.

So if possible, always use VMXNet 3 after installing VMware tools.

Kind Regards,

Albert Widjaja T.

[nancy31]

I never tried using the MXNet 3 after installing VMware tools.  But Since it works for you, I will going to try that one too

[AlbertWT]

Yes it is working by default after you install the Vmware tools, I’ve use it as the default in my template that I deployed widely.