Virtual Networking Best Practices

Depending on the specific on the SQL Server workload, some workloads are more sensitive to
network
latency than others. To configure the network for your SQL Server virtual machine, start with a
thorough
understanding of your workload network requirements. Monitoring the following performance
metrics on
the existing workload for a representative period using Windows Perfmon or VMware Capacity
Planner
can easily help determine the requirements for an SQL Server virtual machine.
The following guidelines generally apply to provisioning the network for an SQL Server virtual
machine.
Use two physical NICs per vSwitch, and if possible, uplink the physical NICs to
separate physical switches. Teaming provides redundancy against NIC failure and, if connected to
separate physical switches, against switch failures. NIC teaming does not necessarily provide higher
throughput.
machines andor the VMkernel),
each such consumer could impact the performance of others. Thus, for the best network
performance, use separate physical NICs for management traffic (vSphere vMotion, FT logging,
VMkernel) and virtual machine traffic. 10Gbps NICs have multiqueue support. 10Gbps NICs can
separate these consumers onto different queues. Thus as long as 10Gbps NICs have sufficient
queues available, this recommendation typically does not apply.
edicated to either network communication or iSCSI,
but not both.

designed for performance. It offers several advanced features including multiqueue support, Receive
Side Scaling, IPv4IPv6 offloads, and MSIMSI-X interrupt delive