The network is usually the latest bottleneck of your virtual machines, except in the case of VMs with huge network traffic or when networks are shared between VM traffic and other types of traffics (such as IP storage, but also vMotion or FT traffic).
Depending on the Network Interface Card (NIC) types, you may have two different common situations for the VM traffic—dedicated NIC ports (typically for 1 Gbps ports where you may have several available ports) or shared ports (typically for 10 or more Gbps ports, where the number of ports usually is limited). Networking will be discussed in depth in Chapter 6, Advanced Network Management.
For the network, usually, the throughput is the common metric used for sizing, as described in the following table:
|
Metric |
Description |
Why it's important |
|
Bytes total/sec |
Bytes total/sec is the rate at which bytes are sent and received over each network adapter. |
This counter shows the amount of traffic through your network. |