How-to enable PvSCSI and when

VMware Paravirtualized SCSI (PVSCSI driver)

Introduced with vSphere 4 this driver can speed up and offload CPU.  VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapter is able to achieve 12% more throughput with 18% less CPU cost compared to the LSI virtual adapter.

vSphere ships with this new high-performance virtual storage adapter. Bus logic and LSI logic were the only choices so far. PVSCSI is best suited to run highly I/O intensive applications in the guest more efficiently (reduced CPU cycles).

Prerequisites:

Verify that the virtual machine has a guest operating system with VMware Tools installed.

Verify that the virtual machine has hardware version 7 or later.

Ensure that you are familiar with PVSCSI limitations

Before you activate and configure take into consideration that:

• You can't use PVSCSI on a VM which is configured for Fault Tolerance protection. (BTW if the VM has FT enabled, it can't use VMXNET3 either…). See the requirements and limitations of FT here.

The actual step-by-step for Windows you can follow here or Linux here.

1. In the vSphere Client inventory, right-click the virtual machine and select Edit Settings.
2. Click the Hardware tab and there you click Add > Select SCSI Device and click Next.
3. Select a SCSI device in the Connection panel > Select an unused Virtual Device Node and click Next. (for example the 1:0)
4. Review your selections and click Finish > the system will add new SCSI Controller and New SCSI Device.
5. Click OK > Reopen the Virtual Machine Properties Editor.
6. Select the new SCSI controller and click Change Type.
7. Select VMware Paravirtual and click OK > Click OK to save your changes.

For some more documentation and(or) how-to, some more links:

• VMware KB article

Check more articles from ESX Virtualization:

• vSphere 6.5
• How to Configure VMware High Availability (HA) Cluster
• Free Tools
• How to Migrate Windows Based vCenter to VCSA 6.5 [Lab] – Windows to Linux
• VMware VCSA 6.5 Active-Passive Setup with Simple Configuration – [LAB] 
• VMware vCSA 6.5 HA Failover Test – Video

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