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Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

 
ccavanna
Advisor

Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

This bug bit me yesterday.... I got one node in a 2 node cluster replaced. Replacing the other one as we speak. I am deploying from the 9.0 ovf then upgrading to 9.5. The virtual hardware version seems to be the problem as i can run 9.5 on hardware version 4 and it runs great. But if you deploy from the 9.5 ovf thats the newer hardware version and it doesn't work well at all. Had issues with disk latency from the vsa to the virtual disks on the servers. All the underlying storage performance was good it was just the virtual disk on the vm's where the latency was horrible.

5y53ng
Regular Advisor

Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

I now have a copy of the 9.0 OVF. I have a few servers to use for testing, so I'm going to give the upgrade to 9.5 on VM HW version 4 and see what happens.

ccavanna
Advisor

Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

It will work great just like all the others have in the past.

5y53ng
Regular Advisor

Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

Braak did you ever get an update from VMware?

M.Braak
Frequent Advisor

Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

The last reply was that they are investigating the issue but it could take a while cause they are very busy at the moment ?!?! and there is a workaround available so it has no prio...

 

We discarded the VSA this week because of the severe performance issues.

I didn't had time to rebuild the VSA using HW4 however.

Tedh256
Frequent Advisor

Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

and the workaround is: simply to not use the VMXNET3 nic?

 

This response does not make sense to me - I'd like to see whether we can look into this incident from our side - can you get me the incident number?

 

 

M.Braak
Frequent Advisor

Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

Not using VMXNET3 will speed things up but still bad performance.

The only stable solution seems to use VMWare Hardware Level 4. So this means deploying VSA 9.0 and the upgrade to 9.5 so hardware stays at level 4.

 

VMware Support Request number is 11128945812 

JohnLong
Collector

Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

I've been following this thread for a while but haven't posted in it till now.

 

I am trying to roll out 2 P4000 VSA 9.5 on ESXi 5 with a server that uses a supermicro X7DWN+ and an adapted 51245 with 10 300gb 15K rpm sas drives. Just a single host for now while testing. All updates available via the update manager have been loaded for both vmware and the P4000.

 

I am getting constant latency warnings and according to esxtop the davg on the iSCSI hba is anywhere between 0 and 150. Physical networking isn't the problem because all traffic is on 1 host and on the same vswitch.

 

davg on the adaptec hba is ALWAYS less than 10 and mostly 0 to 5. Absolutely nothing in the logs about latency on the adaptec hba.

 

I contacted HP about it and their response was to disable multipathing. Well that doesn't appear to have fixed it, though it does improve latency. They also recommended vmxnet3 and hardware version 8.

 

I referred the vmware tech your support request number and he said it's not applicable to my situation because it was opened under esx 4.1.

 

Today I got a PSOD and VMware support said it was because of high latency. They told me not to ignore the latency any longer.

 

I haven't tried installing the VSA 9.0 yet but that will be my next step.

5y53ng
Regular Advisor

Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

Has anyone tested the 9.5 VSA (HW Ver 7+) with ESXi 5 Update 1? I have update 1 installed, but I'll have to restripe everything and to deploy the latest VSA again.

superpaia
Occasional Visitor

Re: Performance issues when using VSA on ESX with VMXNET3 driver

Interesting post; unfortunely same problem here!

With vSphere 5U1 and HP VSA 9.5 (from noew, not upgrade from 9.0).

I also have a SR in VMware, hoping something new asap.

 

By the way, have you some more info about downgrading from HP VSA 9.5 to HP VSA 9.0 without breaking my vmfs ?