E1000 NIC

[larry]

I saw the 7 r2 release notes say to avoid the E1000E vNic, is the E1000 ok ?

[Gostev]

Presumably, based on the VMware KB article mentioned in the release notes.

[larry]

thanks, most of my vm's use the E1000, didnt want to update them all

[nefes]

VMWare KB says that E1000 are at risk zone too: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2059053
I should mention, that according to our internal tests, E1000E gives PSODs quite often, while E1000 does it much more rarelly.
However if you have any of that NICs at your environment I would suggest to monitor your ESXi state in any way.
If PSOD happens with exception mentioned in VMWare KB - it's high time to follow the instructions, provided there.

[larry]

thanks... but now that my head is out of the sand I will need to start changing them. Never had the PSOD but dont want to go there. Will need to find time just not sure where.

[nefes]

Please note that VMXNET3 have some oun bugs. For example, large packet loss: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2039495
So if I were you I wold better stay on E1000 and wait until VMware will fix their bug with it, or move to VMXNET3 temporary and then come back to E1000, depending on size of your infrastructure.

[tsightler]

Also remember that you can also just disable RSS in the Windows guest OS. This is a good temporary workaround and is unlikely to make a measurable performance impact unless you have a VM that is regularly moving data at wire speed. In other words, this might not be a great option for servers that act as Veeam proxies/repositories, but for almost every other server you'll never notice the difference.

Code: Select all

netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled

Then, once VMware releases the patch, just reenable it.

Code: Select all

netsh interface tcp set global rss=enabled

And yes, VMXNET3 is far from bug free, although it does seem that it's become much better. I've wasted a lot of time troubleshooting issues that were caused by VMXNET3 in the past, weird networking issues and performance problems.

[larry]

thanks I will take the easy road when I can.