Uploading from real laptop to virtual machine always slow (10mbps)

[wayne_L]

I have a question about data upload from laptop to VMs installed on an ESXI host. The physical connection is like below,

Windows7, windows2016 and some other VMs have been installed into the ESXI host and work fine (ESXI + vpshere 6.7, RAID5 <eight 10K SAS disks>). Interfaces on the ESXI host and laptop are all 1gbps, but interfaces on SW1 are just 100mbps. A Virtual Distributed Switch is used to manage the virtual network and has two up-links connecting to SW1 as trunks. VMXNET3 used in all of these VMs as NICs and VMtools are installed too.

I am confused about the data transferring process:

1. Data from VM2 --> VM1 --> speed: 400+ mbps (very fast by FileZilla, directly through vDS);

2. Data from Laptop --> ESXI Host Storage Directory --> speed: 100 mbps (at the limit of SW1);

3. Data from Laptop --> VM1 --> speed: 10 mbps (too slow by FileZilla at this time).

Can someone help explain why this happen? I also wonder if there is a method to make it faster when I upload my data from my laptop to VMs on the ESXI Host.

Thanks in advance!

Wayne

[Teddy092]

Hi Wayne,

The speed to transfer data from laptop to VM1 is quite slow indeed.

Have you tried to do the the same but to VM2 or VM3.

Anyway, I suggest that you review the configuration of your vDS. Perhpas you enabled Network I/O Control and then configured bandwidth limitation somehow.

You can also try to create a standard vSwitch and see if you're still experiencing slowness.

But I really recommand you to buy a 1Gbs switch as you already have 1Gbs interfaces on your latptop and ESXi server, and it's really cheap (around $20/25) nowdays.

[wayne_L]

Hi Teddy092,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I tried to transfer data from my real laptop to VM1, VM2, and so on, which are windows server 2016, windows 7pro, CentOS7, or some other VMs. But they have the same speed, up to around 10mbps.

By your suggestion, I checked my vDS configuration and found that the Network I/O Control was enabled. Then, I disabled this function, but the speed is still around 10mbps (or do I need restart the server?). Actually, seems like I don't have any bandwidth limitation config. I just use the default settings of the vDS. I think the vDS seems OK, because when data transferred between VMs, it is really fast. Only when I send data to VMs (when physical NICs are used), it is slow. If I directly send data to the datastore of ESXI host, the speed can reach the limit of the switch interface. The problem may be in the uplinks of the vDS.

You are correct, I really need physical switches with larger bandwidth. I just wonder why this happened and I don't know if it is OK when I use another physical switch.

Thanks a lot!

[Teddy092]

Hi Wayne,

It is normal that the data transferred between VMs is fast as the traffic doesn't go out of the physical NIC of your ESXi host.

But I can't really explain why you're stuck at 10 Mbs when transferring data between your laptop to VMs. Something might be wrong within your vDS configuration.

I'd suggest to either create a new vDS and let everything to default and re-do the test, or you can try to create a normal vSwitch just to see if the behavior of your configuration changes.

Anyway, you definitively need to invest in a 1Gbs physical switch.