VMware Networking Blog

A few recent conversations with customers have quickly gravitated to the topic of 10 GigE. Some customers are making firms plans for deploying 10GigE in their ESX servers. The reasons vary, but top amongst these customers are:

1. Improving managability by reducing the cable and NIC sprawl. 2x 10GigE links versus 6, 8, 10 or more 1 GigE can simplify your infrastructure
2. Convergence of Fibre Channel and Network traffic using FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet). The ability to do away with Fibre Channel HBAs and converge the FC SAN traffic with the ethernet network traffic is the TCO tipping point for some customers.

As you may be aware, FCoE is supported in ESX 3.5u2. Emulex and Qlogic 10 GigE FCoE CNAs (Channel Network Adapters) were qualified and added to our HCL just prior to VMworld in September. 

But, ...how does 10GigE perform on ESX 3.5? Our performance team published a paper this week on that very theme.