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invisible
Nimbostratus
NimbostratusVE 10.2 and networking options
Could anyone clarify what virtual networking cards are available for latest 10.2 VE when deployed on ESX 4.0 U2?
Is VMXNET3 supported or only E1000?
If VMXNET is supported, can all NICs (inside, outside, management) be VMXNET3 or are there any requirements for type/number of NICs?
Could all three NICs belong to dvSwitch groups or Standards switch groups needs to be in place?
Is there any bandwith/throughput limitation on 10.2?
Is any networking offload options (TSO, Large Send, checksum) supported for VE?
Are jumbo frames supported (and tested)?
Is there any calculation/study how much additional lantency LTM's virtualization introduces?
Where can I read about all this? Is there any deployment guide or usage cases specifically for ESX 4.0 environment?
thanks.
3 Replies
qe_102628I'll try to answer some of your questions
The machine image ships with three total NICS:
1 "Flexible" for Management and 2 VMXNET3 for Traffic Management. E1000 is not supported.
The machine supports up to the maximum number of NICs that VMware supports for ESX and ESXi 4.0, which is ten.
It also supports the three tagging modes commonly used in vSphere deployments (VGT, VST, and most certainly EST)
They can belong to dvSwitch portgroups (theres no real difference between a dvSwitch portgroup and a vSwitch portgroup from the VM's perspective, but you may want to use static binding for faster failover)
BIG-IP VE 10.2 is licensed by throughput.
The VMXNET3 driver has been utilized for it's additional offload features. The VMXNET3 driver makes a difference in performance at the higher throughput levels.
Latency: While the hardware platforms that F5 sells are kings for throughput and reduction of latency, the Virtual Edition is no slouch. Paravirtualization, intelligent architecture and F5 know-how were extensively used in developing the Virtual Edition.
Jumbo Frames: No, this is not supported by the BIG-IP. See: https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/6000/300/sol6399.html
More about this: There are documents available on askf5.com
invisibleqe
Thanks for quick and informative answer. As far as about documentation - is there any specific documentation related to VE? Or any documentation related to the prysical appliance is applicable to VE too?- qe_102628yes, there is specific documentation for the VE. Sounds like its time for you to check out the documentation site :-)
