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dborgill
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Installed 10 gig NICS/Network Usage storm

We installed 10 gig NICs on one of our ESX 4.0 u2 cluster with a total of 8 ESX hosts. After installing the 10 gig NICs and verifying settings, we started to migrate several VMs onto the ESX host. After about 20 minutes, we noticed other apps and server in our enviroment to start dropping connections, etc. We noticed (as shown in the attached graphs), that our network usage was off the charts.

After the issue was present for an hour or so, we migrated everything off that host and all apps went back to normal. We can't get very granular on 24 hour old data in Vcenter (Thanks VMware) -- Any ideas?

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Troy_Clavell
Immortal
Immortal

you have jumbo frames enabled on your vSwitch(s)? Can you post the output of

esxcfg-vswitch -l

and

esxcfg-nics -l

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dborgill
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

# esxcfg-vswitch -l

Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports MTU Uplinks

vSwitch0 128 26 128 1500 vmnic12,vmnic2

PortGroup Name VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

SPY 0 0 vmnic12,vmnic2

DC-SERVERS 691 2 vmnic12,vmnic2

NETWORK 0 17 vmnic12,vmnic2

Service Console 680 1 vmnic2

ISCSI 696 1 vmnic12,vmnic2

VMOTION 683 1 vmnic12

NETAPP 681 1 vmnic12,vmnic2

Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports MTU Uplinks

vSwitch1 64 4 64 1500 vmnic1

PortGroup Name VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

DMZ 0 2 vmnic1

Switch Name Num Ports Used Ports Configured Ports MTU Uplinks

vSwitch2 64 3 64 1500 vmnic0

PortGroup Name VLAN ID Used Ports Uplinks

EDGE 0 1 vmnic0

and

  1. esxcfg-nics -l

Name PCI Driver Link Speed Duplex MAC Address MTU Description

vmnic0 02:00.00 bnx2 Up 100Mbps Full 00:1a:64:36:df:2a 1500 Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5709 1000Base-T

vmnic1 02:00.01 bnx2 Up 100Mbps Full 00:1a:64:36:df:2c 1500 Broadcom Corporation Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5709 1000Base-T

vmnic12 2a:00.00 ixgbe Up 10000Mbps Full 00:1b:21:6e:05:1e 1500 Intel Corporation 82599EB 10 Gigabit Network Connection

vmnic2 06:00.00 ixgbe Up 10000Mbps Full 00:1b:21:6e:05:68 1500 Intel Corporation 82599EB 10 Gigabit Network Connection

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Troy_Clavell
Immortal
Immortal

is there a reason why you aren't using Jumbo Frames? I would talk to your network team to find out if the switches you are connected to support jumbo frames, and are enabled, and I would enable jumbo frames on your end to see if this will help.

To create a Jumbo Frames-enabled vSwitch:

1. Log in directly to the ESX host console.

2. To set the MTU size for the vSwitch, run the command:

esxcfg-vswitch -m

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dborgill
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Our Network admins are hesitant to enable jumbo frames even though our Cisco switches support them. They want more details on WHY they should enable it since they have never had to in the past.

Do you have any documentation or best practices on enabling jumbo frames?

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Troy_Clavell
Immortal
Immortal

here's what I have

http://blogs.vmware.com/networking/2010/05/vsphere-loves-10gige.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9670/white_paper_c11-496511.pdf

http://download.intel.com/support/network/sb/10gbe_vsphere_wp_final.pdf

I'm not saying switching to Jumbo Frames will resolve your issue, but if you are going to use 10GB, then it would only make sense to enable jumbo frames.

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