changing to vmxnet
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Hi All,
When i setup my pfsense install onto my esxi host I used E1000, I am looking to change to vmxnet
I am running esxi 6.7 do I need to install vmxnet drivers before making the switch? is there anything else I need to do before making changes?
Thanks very much
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Why are you changing the NICs after the initial installation & configuration? Is there some problem with the E1000?
pfSense recognizes vmx NICs without having to install anything extra.
Your existing config won't work with the new NICs until you reconfigure everything.
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I have just been reading about and a few articles mentioned vmxnet can offer better throughput, sometimes the network side of things seems a bit slow and I do not really have much running apart from snort and OpenVPN
Thanks again
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"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
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When I ran pfsense on esxi the one thing with the vmxnet I noticed is got weird stuff speed reporting and cdp was showing duplex mismatch, etc. So I had moved back to e1000 just to clear up the noise and see actual speed vs autoselect in the web gui, etc.
Im with Kom if its not broken don't worry about it. Are you seeing high cpu usage for your vm, or slow speeds? If not then I wouldn't worry about it. Do you have need for more than 1gig?
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Hi thanks both for the replies,
cpu usage seems fine, my speeds seem to have dropped and if I am trying to accept facebook or whats app video calls, it is very laggy and breaking up, I have tried on my phone using just 3g and it is fine.
my broadband speed is 200mbps but I am lucky if I get half of that
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@techy82 said in changing to vmxnet:
my broadband speed is 200mbps but I am lucky if I get half of that
What are you running the VM on? Not getting your full internet speed you pay for would be a major issue. But changing from e1000 to vmx3 is NOT going to fix such a problem... You got something else wrong there.
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@johnpoz thank you John! Appreciate your reply! Cpu usage is spot on, mind I have a Windows 10 system and changed to vmxnet and the memory usage all 8gb worth is constantly maxed out!
I'll do a bit more digging maybe there's and issue with my line
I have a i5 box I built with 16gb ram, running esxi 6.7
Thank you!
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My OLD!!! HP N40L microserver running pfsense could do 120ish from my internet.. I went with hardware when I bumped my internet to 500/50.. But something somewhat current should easy be able to do 200 on a vm... So yeah you got something not right - and changing e1000 to vm3net is not going to be a fix.
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@johnpoz thanks John I'll check with neighbours and or give vm a ring to check my line it's really poor at the moment
Thanks again
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Just plug something else in bypass the vm router to your modem and see what speed you get..
Easy enough to do a speed test with your VM... Put something on wan and something on lan and run say iperf server on wan side, and then run a test from lan side.. This will tell the max your VM can handle for throughput.. Mine when not firewall/nat could do like 200ish on that old N40L..
Vs building a new esxi host, I just went hardware and got a sg4860.. Was cheaper then the esxi host I wanted to build ;) hehehe... I then just got a synology nas, and run a few vms on there that I like to play with. If I add the prices of sg4860 and my Nas and the new sg300-28 switch I got as well it still less then the host I "wanted" to build for esxi... And I use way less power now as well... But I do miss the ease of playing with dev versions of pfsense when it was VM.. But now when I have to reboot my nas for something I still have internet - which is way better then when reboot esxi host the whole network was down, even local routing between vlans, etc.
