vSphere 5.5 with intel x540 10BG ethernet issue

[jrick]

We have curently a performance issue with x540 intel 10GB ethernet card.

Our HA cluster runs on DELL R730xd servers with 2x2 intel x540 10 GB ethernet card with the last vSphere 5.5 U2 DELL customized image.

- NIC are recognized as 10000 Full in VMware and on the switch side

- Our storage in an EMC VNXe 10 GB ethernet iSCSI

- Servers are running with the last firmware

- DELL N4032 10GB ethernet switch

The DELL cutomized image provide the following drivers :

# esxcli software vib list | grep ixgbe

net-ixgbe                      3.18.7-1OEM.550.0.0.1198611

Problem is that we cannot go up to 1G traffic to the SAN or to another VM on another node, other Windows servers can go up to 1GB without any problem

I tried to update the ixgbe drivers with the last drivers I found on the VMware download center but same issue :

esxcli software vib list | grep ixgbe

net-ixgbe                      3.21.4-1OEM.550.0.0.1331820            Intel     VMwareCertified   2 15-01-23

Has anyone the same issue ?

An idea how to solve the problem ?

[mephistopoa]

I'm having the same problem here and was wondering if you ever found  asolution for this?

I've got 5 hosts with the x540 and no host can do more than 1GB even thought all network is fully 10GB, switches, etc...

[brunofernandez1]

another user is having also performance problem with the same network card:

VMware ESXi 5.5 hosts with upgraded 10GB network card and Switch can't do more than 750MBIT transfer...

[tkdunbar]

Have you set your adapter types to VMXNET3?

[mephistopoa]

Yes

cold migration has the same problem using the management network, nothing faster than 1GB

[tkdunbar]

Do the vnics show 10000 Mbps when you run esxcfg-nics -l ?

Have you checked for duplex mismatch? 

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100408...

[mephistopoa]

The cards are working at 10GB full duplex, doing live vmotion I can get 8gbit+

the problem is cold migration, and transferring files over the network between VMs.

I have vmotion and management enabled on the same NIC, so cold migration should be faster than 450mbit, which is crap!