Low throughput under vmware wkstn 12

JamesVA

Greetings! Initially I was struggling getting a 1gbs throughput on my pfSense build (Atom D2550, 4gb RAM, 2x1gbps NICs on a Jetway board).. was getting about 500gbps up/down using an internet speedtest. All services other than minimal were turned off. CPU was pegged all the time during the test.

So i decided to ee how much more horsepower I will need and did a fresh install on a VMware workstation 12 VM (2 vCPU (i5-3427U), 2gb RAM, 2 virtual NICs). NICs are on the same switch, but with are sitting on different subnets.

192.168.1.0/24 - is being used as a WAN subnet
10.0.100.0/24 - is being used as a LAN subnet

Ran an iPerf test from a host on 10.0.100.x subnet to a host on 192.168.1.x and was getting about 160mbps, while CPU was at about 100% utilization.

So I added 2 more vCPUs. At 4 vCPUs, when I ran the same test, I was still getting identical throughput (160mbps), but CPUs were only being utilized about 45%. mbuff seemed OK.

I've attached output of 'top -SH'. On a side note - I did not manually install vmware tools, assuming it's already there? Or is everyone running it on ESXi installs tools manually?

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks!

2017-02-11_15-09-36.jpg_thumb

JamesVA

Anyone have any idea?

KOM

What vNIC were you using, the E1000 or the vmxnet3?

JamesVA

both e1000 (configured in the .vmx)

KOM

The e1000 NICs use more CPU if I recall. Try with vmxnet3 instead and see if it makes any difference.

JamesVA

Switched to vmxnet3, but utilization and throughput are identical to e1000….. anything else I can try? thanks in advance!

heper

are you running multiple layer-3 over a single layer-2 ? if yes: don't

JamesVA

heper - it's [iperf client] <-> [pfsense VM] <-> [iperf server] that all sit on the same switch;

"iperf client", "pfsense VM" and "iperf server" are each on their own hardware.

I don't this would be considered as multiple L3 setup right?