Intel X540 on ESXi 7.x

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VirtuallyPoor

New Member
Aug 21, 2021
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Per the Vmware release notes:

Networking Issues
  • Reduced throughput in networking performance on Intel 82599/X540/X550 NICs
    The new queue-pair feature added to ixgben driver to improve networking performance on Intel 82599EB/X540/X550 series NICs might reduce throughput under some workloads in vSphere 7.0 as compared to vSphere 6.7.
    Workaround: To achieve the same networking performance as vSphere 6.7, you can disable the queue-pair with a module parameter. To disable the queue-pair, run the command:
    # esxcli system module parameters set -p "QPair=0,0,0,0..." -m ixgben
When I try the suggested command below, I get the following response: Error: Unknown command or namespace sytem module parameters set
Code:
esxcli system module parameters set -p "QPair=0,0,0,0..." -m ixgben
I'm running 7.0 Update 2 . Did they fix it and remove the command? The release notes don't show it as being resolved.
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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lets go over basics first:
a)did you confirm that your x540 is indeed using ixgben driver?
b)did you put the host into maintenance mode first?
c) what's the output of "esxcli system module parameters list --module ixgben"
 

VirtuallyPoor

New Member
Aug 21, 2021
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Thank you @BoredSyadmin.

Embarrassingly enough I think I was entering the commands on the wrong ESXi host. Stale DNS records not getting purged, leading me to an incorrect host.

The correct host took the esxcli system module parameters set -p "QPair=0,0,0,0..." -m ixgben command and exited with a zero status (I did not have the system in maintenence mode, but had SSH enabled and no guests booted).

For the sake of posterity, here is the answer to your question:

Code:
DRSS     array of int              Number of RSS queues: 0 (default) = disable, 1 = enable 4 default RSS queues
DevRSS   array of int              Number of Device RSS queues: 0 = disable, 1 = enable 16 queues and disable all virtualization features (default = 0)
QPair    array of int  0,0,0,0...  Pair Rx & Tx Queue Interrupt: 0 = disable, 1 = enable (default)
RSS      array of int              Number of RSS queues: 0 (default) = disable, 1 = enable 4 RSS queues
RxITR    array of int              Default RX interrupt interval: 0 = disable, 1 = dynamic throttling, 2-1000 in microseconds (default = 50)
TxITR    array of int              Default TX interrupt interval: 0 = disable, 1 = dynamic throttling, 2-1000 in microseconds (default = 100)
VMDQ     array of int              Number of Virtual Machine Device Queues: 0/1 = disable, 2-16 enable (default = 8)
max_vfs  array of int              Maximum number of VFs to be enabled (0..63)