HCX - Traffic performance issue observed in PhotonOS build over extended datapath

Products

• VMware HCX
• VMware Cloud on AWS

Issue/Introduction

This resource is to inform about performance degradation issues over extended datapath and how to recover that.

Symptoms:
Post HCX Manager and Network Extension (NE) appliance version upgrade to 4.4.0 or later, traffic performance loss will be observed over extended network data pipeline.
The overall throughput may reduce upto ~20 to 25%, and could vary depending upon other infrastructure conditions like underlying BW, MTU mismatch etc.

Cause

The overall performance has been degraded due interoperability of PhotonOS kernel mainly with Older CPU families like Broadwell, Platinum series etc.
Note: The impact will be noticed if either side Connector or Cloud is running Older CPU families.

Resolution

This issue is fixed in HCX 4.6.1 release.

Workaround:
Please open Service Request (SR) with VMware Support Services for further assistance.

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:

• This will impact HCX version 4.4.0 or later running PhotonOS build.
• This will ONLY impact the max throughput limit over an L2 extended data pipeline.
• There won't be any impact from Latency/Jitter & Drop perspective.
• Migration data pipeline over IX appliance will remain unaffected.