Choosing a NIC (Network Adapter) for VM in Vmware ESXi environment

Choosing a NIC (Network Adapter) for VM in Vmware ESXi environment

Introduction-

NIC types available for VM  are depends on VM Hardware version and Guest OS (Operating System). When you configure a virtual machine, you can add network adapters (NICs) and specify the adapter type…

The following NIC types widely used:

E1000 –
Emulated version of the Intel 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet NIC, with drivers available in most newer guest operating systems, including Windows XP and later and Linux versions 2.4.19 and later.

E1000e – This feature emulates a newer model of Intel Gigabit NIC (number 82574) in the virtual hardware. This is known as the “e1000e” vNIC. e1000e is available only on hardware version 8 (and newer) virtual machines in vSphere.

VMXNET2 (Enhanced)

Optimized for performance in a virtual machine and has no physical counterpart. Because operating system vendors do not provide built-in drivers for this card, you must install VMware Tools to have a driver for the VMXNET network adapter available.
Based on the VMXNET adapter but provides high-performance features commonly used on modern networks, such as jumbo frames and hardware offloads. VMXNET 2 (Enhanced) is available only for some guest operating systems on ESX/ESXi 3.5 and later.

VMXNET3

Next generation of a paravirtualized NIC designed for performance. VMXNET 3 offers all the features available in VMXNET 2 and adds several new features, such as multiqueue support (also known as Receive Side Scaling in Windows), IPv6 offloads, and MSI/MSI-X interrupt delivery. VMXNET 3 is not related to VMXNET or VMXNET 2.
– VMXNET 3 is supported only for virtual machines version 7 and later.
– Support 10Gpbs ie 10Gig Network
– Jumbo frame supported

I would suggest to use  “VMXNET3”

Thank you,
Arun

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