Quality of Service (QoS) in VMware vCenter is a feature that allows system administrators to monitor and manage network traffic to reduce packet loss and provide better network bandwidth for virtual machines. QoS settings can be configured at different levels of your virtual environment such as Distributed Port Groups, Distributed Switches, and virtual machines.
To configure QoS management settings in vCenter, you use network I/O control features. Here is a step-by-step guide:
1. Access vSphere Web Client: To configure QoS settings, log into the vSphere Web Client.
1. Network I/O Control Configurations: Navigate to “Networking” and right-click the distributed switch for which you wish to edit settings. Select “Settings” and then “NIOC Settings”.
1. Enable Network I/O Control: Ensure network I/O control is enabled. If it is not, click on “EDIT” to modify settings. Check the box to “Enable Network I/O Control” and click “OK”.
1. Configuring Traffic Classes: Once NIOC is enabled, configure traffic classes or types. You’ll see several system traffic types like Virtual Machine, Management, vSphere Replication, NFS, iSCSI, FT Logging, vMotion. Select the type of traffic you wish to provide QoS for and click on “EDIT”.
1. Assign Shares, Reservation, Limit: In the edit resource allocation page, you can assign shares, the reservation, and the limit. Each traffic type is allocated a certain number of shares which denotes its priority. Reservation is the bandwidth capacity that is assuredly available to the traffic type. The limit is the bandwidth that a traffic type can consume.
1. Set QoS Priority Tag: Once you have completed the allocation, click on the arrow next to the traffic type to expand its options. Here you can set the QoS Priority Tag (802.1p) as desired.
1. Save: Click okay to save the settings.
1. Apply Settings to Virtual Machines: After NIOC configurations are set up, you should going into VMkernel Adapter settings, set the tag which will give the desired traffic type a certain priority on the network.
Please note that QoS priorities are standardized, and the priority tag can have a value from 0 through 7, with 7 as the highest priority. It’s recommended to carefully plan how you allocate shares among different traffic types to avoid unintended prioritization.
Reference:
1. VMware Documentation: Network I/O Control (https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.vsphere.networking.doc/GUID-17596208-6BE8-40A1-B1C6-EC4F4621A9B1.html)
2. Configure Network I/O Control – VMware Docs (https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.networking.doc/GUID-613630FF-38E7-41F3-9AF4-40653FF566BA.html).
Remember, the VMware vCenter QoS configurations are created with the intention to provide a reliable and optimal performance for your virtual infrastructure by ensuring equivalent resource allocation and traffic prioritization.
