VMware Cloud Community
AlexTheBoss
Contributor
Contributor

Traffic shaping question

I have traffic shaping enabled and configured on a VM Port group using a standard vSwitch as opposed to a dvSwitch.  I know that the traffic shaping policy applies to all VMs connected to the port group but what I am not clear on is this: if I have an average bandwitdh of X Kbps and peak bandwidth of Y Kbps, does that mean each VM gets X and Y Kbps, or does that mean that I have a total of X Kbps bandwidth and peak of Y Kbps to be shared between all the VMs on that port group?

The reason I ask is that I have customers who will be paying for a pre-allotted amount of bandwidth and I want to make sure that amount is available but not let them use more.

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2 Replies
RBurns-WIS
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Alex,

Here's the documented explanation of each traffic shaping allocation which should clear things up.

Average Bandwidth

The number of bits per second to allow across the vSwitch, averaged over time.

Peak Bandwidth

The  maximum amount of bandwidth in kilobits (kbps) the vSwitch or port  group can handle. If the traffic exceeds the peak bandwidth specified,  the packets will be queued for later transmission. If the queue is full,  the packets will be discarded and dropped.


Burst Size

The  maximum number of bytes that the port is allowed to burst. If the  packet exceeds the burst size parameter, the remaining packets will be  queued for later transmission. If the queue is full, the packets will be  discarded and dropped. If you set the average and the peak, then this  is a multiplicative factor of how long the bandwidth can exceed the  average at any rate before if must come back down to the average. The  higher it goes, the less time it can stay there with any particular  burst size.

Regards,

Robert

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chadwickking
Expert
Expert

Hi,

I just wanted to clear something up.  Are you wanting to include communication coming in and out? If so, then you would want to look at DVS because it is able to do both ingress and transgree traffic.  I believe a VSS only support Transgress traffic or traffic coming from the VM not to the VM. ofcourse dVS means you also have to use vCenter:

Dvs:

http://www.hardware.com/downloads/solutions/TechnicalWhitepapers/WhatsNewInvSphere4-Networking.pdf

Also you can see:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/213423

This has been asked before Smiley Happy

I hope this helps!

Regards,

Chad King

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