Insufficent VMQ receive queues on 650FLB adapter using BL460c Gen9 for Windows 2012R2 Hyper-V VDI

[blautens]

Has anyone noticed that the 650FLB adapter really doesn't have very good VMQ support compared to older adapters? In my ITDev Lab, my older BL460C Gen8 blades using 554FLB NICs have plenty of queues - 29 per NIC (please forgive the formatting):

PS C:\Windows\system32> get-netadaptervmq

Name InterfaceDescription Enabled BaseVmqProcessor MaxProcessors NumberOfReceive
Queues
---- -------------------- ------- ---------------- ------------- ---------------
Migration_NIC1 HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 5...#13 False 0:0 29
Cluster_NIC1 HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 5...#16 False 0:0 29
Storage2_NIC1 HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 5...#15 False 0:0 29
Storage1_NIC1 HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 5...#14 False 0:0 29
VMNetworks_NIC2 HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 5...#12 True 0:0 29
VMNetworks_NIC1 HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 5...#11 True 0:0 29
MGMT_NIC2 HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 55...#9 True 0:0 29
MGMT_NIC1 HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 5...#10 True 0:0 29
VMNetworks_Team Microsoft Network Adapter Mult... True 0:0 58
MGMT_Team Microsoft Network Adapter Mu...#2 True 0:0 58

But the newer 650's have very little - 9 per NIC - not enough to support 75-100 VDI's:

PS C:\Windows\system32> get-netadaptervmq

Name InterfaceDescription Enabled BaseVmqProcessor MaxProcessors NumberOfReceive
Queues
---- -------------------- ------- ---------------- ------------- ---------------
Storage 2 HP FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 65...#6 False 0:22 8 9
Storage 1 HP FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 65...#5 False 0:2 8 9
Migration 2 HP FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 65...#4 False 1:18 1 9
Migration 1 HP FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 65...#3 False 0:18 1 9
Management 2 HP FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 65...#2 True 0:0 4 9
Management 1 HP FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 650F... True 0:0 4 9
LogicalSwitch01 Microsoft Network Adapter Mult... True 0:0 18

 So I want to use these as Hyper-V hosts for VDI (XenDesktop), and hope to get 60 or 70 VMs per host. But with these 650FLB adapters, when I use our typical template of 2 NICs for VM traffic, I won't have nearlhy enough VMQs.

Am I missing something here? Shouldn't newer hardware have more, or at least the same? The only workaround I can think of is adding every NIC to a single virtual switch and having the storage, migration, and bandwidth, carved out using port profiles in the virtual switch.

Am I missing something? Did we order the wrong adapter? I'm using the latest firmware (10.7.110.34) and driver (10.7.110.16) I can find. We ordered a hundred blades or so - I'd hate to be stuck with this as it is.

Thanks,

Bruce

[PeterStem]

Hello Bruce,

did u missed something? I have exactly the same configuration in my old and new environment (29 and 9 queues).

Regards,

Peter

[jdixon]

I noticed the same thing. Did you ever get an answer on this?

[blautens]

Sort of - our HP representatives said we basically bought a hundred or so servers with the wrong NIC. So that's an answer, just not a useful one. We ended up not separating them into different NICs in Virtual Connect and instead creating vNICs in Powershell, because you lose a couple of VMQs each time you create another NIC in Virtual Connect.

I wish I could remember the details, but it's been a while, and I work with development on our early or prerelease software, so it doesn't necessarily stick around for me to reference. And in this case although we were using large numbers of servers and sessions, it never went past testing anyway, so I chalked it up to a good (if painful) footnote for our reference architecture documents.

[jdixon]

I don't recall the specs on the NIC's mentioning how many VMQ's they had, so how did you buy the wrong nics? lol

[blautens]

You are correct - VMQs were not listed on any literature for that NIC. I think they might have been listed on the other NIC available. Regardless, I believe our HP rep said something like "you should have asked". You can say that to a captive customer.

It's similar to the reason we ended up with 5 fully populated Moonshot chassis around the globe, which I assume are now being used as boat anchors, or artificial reefs, or perhaps recycled into an entire car (since they were heavy enough and used enough steel). In that case, we bought the "wrong cartridges", not because we didn't ask, but because we didn't wait 3 years longer when they actually made any that were worthwhile. Because we had to buy them - we are a captive customer. *sigh*

[jdixon]

I have the 554FLB and I noticed there is 29 and 16. 

Have you guys noticed this before?

[blautens]

Curious - I've not seen that before. Still using Windows 2012R2? Perhaps a newer NIC firmware? (My original post was quite some time ago.)