ESX Virtualization

VMware ESXi, vSphere, VMware Backup, Hyper-V... how-to, videos....

Nakivo Backup and Replication - #1 Backup solution for Virtual, physical, cloud, NAS and SaaS

Menu
  • Certification
      • VCP-DCV vSphere 8
          • vcp2024-125.
        • Close
    • Close
  • VMware
    • Configuration Maximums
    • vSphere
      • vSphere 8.0
      • vSphere 7.0
      • vSphere 6.7
      • vSphere 6.5
      • vSphere 6.0
      • Close
    • VMworld
      • VMware EXPLORE 2024
      • VMware EXPLORE 2023
      • VMware EXPLORE 2022
      • VMworld 2019
      • VMworld 2018
      • VMworld 2017
      • VMworld 2016
      • VMworld 2015
      • VMworld 2014
      • VMworld 2013
      • VMworld 2012
      • VMworld 2011
      • Close
    • Close
  • Microsoft
    • Windows Server 2012
    • Windows Server 2016
    • Windows Server 2019
    • Close
  • Categories
    • Tips – VMware, Microsoft and General IT tips and definitions, What is this?, How this works?
    • Server Virtualization – VMware ESXi, ESXi Free Hypervizor, VMware vSphere Server Virtualization, VMware Cloud and Datacenter Virtualization
    • Backup – Virtualization Backup Solutions, VMware vSphere Backup and ESXi backup solutions.
    • Desktop Virtualization – Desktop Virtualization, VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion, VMware Horizon View, tips and tutorials
    • How To – ESXi Tutorials, IT and virtualization tutorials, VMware ESXi 4.x, ESXi 5.x and VMware vSphere. VMware Workstation and other IT tutorials.
    • Free – Free virtualization utilities, ESXi Free, Monitoring and free backup utilities for ESXi and Hyper-V. Free IT tools.
    • Videos – VMware Virtualization Videos, VMware ESXi Videos, ESXi 4.x, ESXi 5.x tips and videos.
    • Home Lab
    • Reviews – Virtualization Software and reviews, Disaster and backup recovery software reviews. Virtual infrastructure monitoring software review.
    • Close
  • Partners
    • NAKIVO
    • StarWind
    • Zerto
    • Xorux
    • Close
  • This Web
    • News
    • ESXi Lab
    • About
    • Advertise
    • Archives
    • Disclaimer
    • PDFs and Books
    • Close
  • Free
  • Privacy policy

VCP6-DCV Objective 2.2 – Configure Network I/O Control (NIOC)

By Vladan SEGET | Last Updated: October 31, 2017

Shares

VCP6-DCV Study time… In no particular order I start covering VCP6-DCV section of the VMware blueprint to help out folks learning towards VCP6-DCV VMware certification exam. Due to VMware recertification policy the VCP exam has now an expiration date. You can renew by passing delta exam while still holding current VCP or pass VCAP. If you're new to virtualization and do not have any VMware certification exam, the VCP is the exam to have. Today's topic? VCP6-DCV Objective 2.2 – Configure Network I/O Control (NIOC).

For whole exam coverage I created a dedicated VCP6-DCV page. If you just look on some how-to, news, videos about vSphere 6 check out my vSphere 6 page. vSphere 6 grew up quite big compared to vSphere 5.5 release, but simplified the deployment and management. “White boxing” got more complicated as drivers for unsupported hardware not always works. vSphere Web client is more present and used in this release as the legacy C# client does not allow to configure advanced configuration options and functions like SSO, FT, VSAN. Let's get started.

vSphere Knowledge

  • Identify Network I/O Control requirements
  • Identify Network I/O Control capabilities
  • Enable/Disable Network I/O Control
  • Monitor Network I/O Control

 

—————————————————————————————————–

Identify Network I/O Control requirements

What is network I/O control? It's  a mechanism which allows to prioritize certain data flows on distributed switch over others. It allows to allocate more network bandwidth to business critical applications/VMs where those have to “fight” for bandwidth. (similarly like SIOC for storage).

The requirements:

  • Licensing – Enterprise + license required because it uses vSphere Distributed Switch.
  • VDS Only – the Network I/O control can be enabled only on VDS
  • Network I/O control v3 possible only on VDS 6.0
  • SR-IOV is not available for virtual machines configured to use Network I/O Control version 3.

Identify Network I/O Control capabilities

When enabled NIOC divides the traffic into resource pools. Bandwidth reservations can be used to isolate network resources for a class of traffic, for example in VSAN cluster you'd want to reserve part of the traffic only for VSAN traffic no matter what happens to the other traffic.

Enable/Disable Network I/O Control

Where to enable? In vSphere 6 when creating new VDS it gets enabled by default.

vSphere Web Client > Networking > vDS > Manage > Resource Allocation > System traffic

Note: If you have previous version of vSphere and you upgraded, than you might see previous version of NIOC (version 2) and so there is not the menu “system traffic”. Make sure that you upgrade your VDS to v 6.0.

vSphere Distributed Switch version 6.0

So in our case we can see the menu system traffic… The traffic types are all set to 50 shares except the VM traffic. No reservation or limits are set by default.

  • Management traffic – VM traffic
  • NFS traffic
  • Virtual SAN traffic
  • iSCSI
  • vMotion
  • vSphere Replication (VR)
  • Fault tolerance (FT)
  • vSphere Data protection (VDP) backup traffic

Shares and reservations at their default state. No limits or Reservations.

vSphere Distributed Switch version 6.0 and NIOC v3

Bandwidth Allocation for Virtual Machine Traffic

Version 3 of Network I/O Control lets you configure bandwidth requirements for individual virtual machines. You can also use network resource pools where you can assign a bandwidth quota from the aggregated reservation for the virtual machine traffic and then allocate bandwidth from the pool to individual virtual machines.

Individual VMs can be configured according to bandwidth requirements through VM options at the network level…

Check NIOC at the VM level

Shares – The relative priority, from 1 to 100, of the traffic through this VM network adapter against the capacity of the physical adapter that is carrying the VM traffic to the network.
Reservation – The minimum bandwidth, in Mbps, that the VM network adapter must receive on the physical adapter.
Limit – The maximum bandwidth on the VM network adapter for traffic to other virtual machines on the same or on another host.

Enable/Disable Network I/O Control – at the vDS level..

Enable or Disable NIOC - VCP6-DCV

To enable bandwidth allocation for virtual machines by using Network I/O Control, configure the virtual machine system traffic. The bandwidth reservation for virtual machine traffic is also used in admission control. When you power on a virtual machine, admission control verifies that enough bandwidth is available.

Check the following requirements:

  • vSphere Distributed Switch is version 6.0.0 and later.
  • Network I/O Control on the switch is version 3.
  • Network I/O Control is enabled.

Network Resource Pools – You can create new network resource pools to reserve part of the aggregated bandwidth for VMs system trafic on all the physical adapters connected to the VDS.

For example, if the virtual machine system traffic has 0.5 Gbps reserved on each 10 GbE uplink on a distributed switch that has 10 uplinks, then the total aggregated bandwidth available for VM reservation on this switch is 5 Gbps. Each network resource pool can reserve a quota of this 5 Gbps capacity.

Example from vSphere Networking Guide p.167

Bandwidth Aggregation for Network Resource Pools Across the Uplinks of a vSphere Distributed Switch

Create network resource pool: Distributed switch > Manage > Resource allocation > Network resource pools > Add

Once you create network resource pool you can add distributed port group so you an allocate bandwidth to the VMs that are connected to that portgroup.

Monitor Network I/O Control

You can check and monitor Network I/O Control through vSphere web client.  Networking > vDS > Manage > Resource Allocation

Concerning the system traffic it's possible to have a look a those metrics and details:

  • Network I/O Control Status (state is Enabled/Disabled)
  • NIOC Version
  • Physical network adapters details
  • Available bandwidth capacity
  • Total bandwidth capacity
  • Maximum reservation allowed
  • Configured reservation
  • Minimum link speed

Documentation and Tools

  • vSphere Installation and Setup Guide
  • vSphere Networking Guide
  • What’s New in the VMware vSphere® 6.0 Platform
  • Performance Evaluation of Network I/O Control in VMware vSphere 6
  • vSphere Client / vSphere Web Client
Shares
5/5 - (4 votes)

| Filed Under: Server Virtualization Tagged With: Certification VCP, Configure Network I/O Control (NIOC), NIOC, VMware Network I/O control

About Vladan SEGET

This website is maintained by Vladan SEGET. Vladan is as an Independent consultant, professional blogger, vExpert x16, Veeam Vanguard x9, VCAP-DCA/DCD, ESX Virtualization site has started as a simple bookmarking site, but quickly found a large following of readers and subscribers.

Connect on: Facebook. Feel free to network via Twitter @vladan.

Comments

  1. Max says

    May 6, 2016 at 12:01 pm

    When do shares apply? When there’s a network bottleneck/contention detected? Thanks.

    • Emmanuel says

      November 21, 2016 at 1:15 pm

      hello am preparing for VCP 6.0 exam for the first time , please can you help me with the current dump material to help me prepare for this exam.

      • Alfonso Lopez says

        March 18, 2017 at 12:29 am

        Wrong place to ask for that, pal.
        If you were really preparing for the VCP, you wouldn’t just ask for the dumps.
        Preparing means learning the technologies.

Private Sponsors

Featured

  • Thinking about HCI? G2, an independent tech solutions peer review platform, has published its Winter 2023 Reports on Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) Solutions.
  • Zerto: One Platform for Disaster Recovery, Backup & Cloud Mobility: Try FREE Hands-On Labs Today!
Click to Become a Sponsor

Most Recent

  • FREE version of StarWind VSAN vs Trial of Full version
  • Commvault’s Innovations at RSA Conference 2025 San Francisco
  • VMware ESXi FREE is FREE again!
  • Installation of StarWind VSAN Plugin for vSphere
  • Protect Mixed environments with Nakivo Physical Machine recovery (bare metal)
  • No more FREE licenses of VMware vSphere for vExperts – What’s your options?
  • Tails – Your Private OS on USB Stick
  • StarWind V2V Converter Now has CLI
  • Veeam VHR ISO v2 – 2025 Download and Install
  • Deployment OVA and Installation of Nakivo Backup and Replication for VMware

Get new posts by email:

 

 

 

 

Support us on Ko-Fi

 

 

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Sponsors

Free Trials

  • DC Scope for VMware vSphere – optimization, capacity planning, and cost management. Download FREE Trial Here.
  • Augmented Inline Deduplication, Altaro VM Backup v9 For #VMware and #Hyper-V – Grab your copy now download TRIAL.

VMware Engineer Jobs

VMware Engineer Jobs

YouTube

…

Find us on Facebook

ESX Virtualization

…

Copyright © 2025 ·Dynamik-Gen · Genesis Framework · Log in