"Veeam VMware: vSphere Host Network Packet Loss Analysis" alert raised by Veeam plugin

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Veeam plugin display an alert noting detected Receive packet drops in the ESXi NIC statistics with the following description:
  

  "The vSphere Host is reporting high network packet loss of #### over all NICs. Network packet loss indicates a network bottleneck or a configuration issue."

• The drops can be found in NIC stats:
  
  • Login to ESXi host over SSH and enter the following command for the vmnic in question:  esxcli network nic stats get -n vmnic#
    
    Example output:
    

          NIC statistics for vmnic2: 
          Packets received: 7345358922 
          Packets sent: 50851924933 
          Bytes received: 5637987530469 
          Bytes sent: 74401670167806 
          Receive packets dropped: 55118   <<<---  example drops here
          Transmit packets dropped: 0 
          Multicast packets received: 9995525 
          Broadcast packets received: 29688699 
          Multicast packets sent: 230191 
          Broadcast packets sent: 189720 
          Total receive errors: 0 
          Receive length errors: 0 
          Receive over errors: 0 
          Receive CRC errors: 0 
          Receive frame errors: 0 
          Receive FIFO errors: 0 
          Receive missed errors: 0 
          Total transmit errors: 0 
          Transmit aborted errors: 0 
          Transmit carrier errors: 0 
          Transmit FIFO errors: 0 
          Transmit heartbeat errors: 0 
          Transmit window errors: 0 

Cause

Veeam plugin checks NIC statistics and creates an alert if drops are detected.

Resolution

See Troubleshooting NIC errors and other network traffic faults in ESXi to analyze the drops.

Additional Information

vSphere Host Analysis Monitors

vSAN -- Alarm about high pNIC error rate being detected