vSwitch Local Speed
A client told me today he thought he was having poor backup performance over a virtual network. But when he started debugging he noticed that it wasn’t just Backup that was the problem it was all network IO through a local vswitch. He started the conversation by asking me what I expect to see in network throughput between 2 VMs localised on the same vswitch. He informed me no matter what he tried in terms of using a vswitch with/without a pNIC and trying different types of vNIC he couldn’t push 240mbits/s. He asked him the obvious question which was “Is there anything else happening on the system that could be impacting net performance, like CPU overhead” and the answer was “no”.
So I decided to test it for myself.
As did my client I used the Netperf tool to test throughput between the 2 VMs. To use NetPerf you run:
C:\Netserver.exe on one VM
and then
C:\Netclient.exe –H hostname (of the first system)
on the other VM.
After a few seconds you should get a result displayed in mbits/s
And just like my client I tested a vswitch with/without a pNIC and different types of vNIC. I also tested different hosts to get varied result. The problem is I saw results which I’d expect to see, and on average I saw speeds of 500mbits/s
Flexible | 1 | 2 | Average |
ESX1 | |||
vswitch +pNIC | 502 | 594 | 548 |
vswitch -pNIC | 608 | 565 | 586.5 |
ESX2 | |||
vswitch +pNIC | 461 | 482 | 471.5 |
vswitch -pNIC | 261 | 495 | 378 |
VMXNet3 | 1 | 2 | Average |
ESX1 | |||
vswitch +pNIC | 641 | 621 | 631 |
vswitch -pNIC | 628 | 593 | 610.5 |
ESX2 | |||
vswitch +pNIC | 465 | 496 | 480.5 |
vswitch -pNIC | 531 | 533 | 532 |
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