VMXNET3 support on lastest release?
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Since most of the guides and info i find about using vmxnet3 drivers on pfSense are outdated, and some even claim that the driver is seeminly broken on pfSense but not on BSD i wanted to see if someone here has updated info.
I'm about to scratch install a pfSense machine and this is the time for changing things if i so want. -
pfSense is built on FreeBSD and uses whatever NIC drivers FreeBSD comes with. pfSense 2.2.x is built on FreeBSD 10.1, and vmxnet3 drivers are included by default.
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You're looking at outdated information (if it ever was true at all). vmxnet3 is the preferred choice on 2.2.x versions, and what our VMware Ready OVA uses.
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So, vmxnet3 plus open-vm-tools, is the supported way to go?
I can't remember why but my 2.2.2 install ended up with e1000 interfaces (it was the test one anyways) -
Yep.
You configure the NIC type in VMware. It'll default to e1000 for FreeBSD type guests, just change it.
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While yes the vmx3net drivers work.. I personally moved back to e1000 because of issues with cdp and lldp. When using the vmx3net native that is in freebsd you only see autoselect for speed and causes switches using cdp/lldp to report duplex mismatch, etc.
I like using the ladvd package on pfsense and this was causing lots of log entries in switch about duplex.. Just went back to e1000 and no issues - I really did not see any sort of performance dif between them. But then again I not pumping any sort of serious bandwidth that you might see in a enterprise or large deployment.
