by William Lam // Leave a Comment
By default, VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 will use the optimized Enhanced Data Path (EDP) Standard switch mode when configuring NSX, which will require you to have an EDP capable network adaptor. One way to check whether your network adaptor supports EDP is by using the Broadcom Compatibility Guide (BCG) and ensuring "Enhanced Data Path - Interrupt mode" feature
Alternatively, if you already have ESXi running, you can quickly check by running the following command: esxcfg-nics -e
by William Lam // Leave a Comment
After publishing my Running Nested ESXi, NSX-V or NSX-T on top of NSX-T article which actually turned out to be quite popular, I received an interesting question on whether ENS for NSX-T could also be configured within a Nested ESXi deployment? I was a little familiar with ENS, which I will explain in a second. However, I was not completely sure about the benefits of running ENS in a Nested environment.
With the help from my friend Frank Escaros-Buechsel, who actually works in our NFV group at VMware. Frank helped validate the instructions but he also provided some additional insights on why this could be useful in a lab setup for verifying configuration and behaviors when additional tuning maybe required. If you are NOT running NFV-based workloads, ENS is not something you need to configure when running NSX-T using Nested ESXi.
So what is ENS? Enhanced Network Stack (ENS) also referred to as Enhanced Data Path is an NSX-T capability which was first introduced with NSX-T 2.3. ENS is specifically designed for Network Function Virtualization (NFV) workloads that require a high performance data path. Such workloads include Telco, 5G and IoT based deployments where improved packet throughput is critical for the responsiveness of these applications.