Users receive a 'Pool-group buffer 90 percent threshold exceeded!' alert from the monitoring tool.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• On network monitoring tool, an alert is received as shown below

'Pool-group buffer 90 percent threshold exceeded!".


• Login to the ESXI host as user root,run the script  /usr/lib/vmware/vm-support/bin/nicinfo.sh and as shown in the output below, there are no errors found in Rx/Tx frames 
  
  

     NIC statistics for vmnic#:
        Packets received: 46739815370
        Packets sent: 56350420716
        Bytes received: 54306949964724
        Bytes sent: 65359927659725
        Receive packets dropped: 0
        Transmit packets dropped: 0
        Multicast packets received: 68960883
        Broadcast packets received: 26244565
        Multicast packets sent: 652839
        Broadcast packets sent: 822704
        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

• The current ring size is set to the maximum value for the NIC, as shown in /usr/lib/vmware/vm-support/bin/nicinfo.sh. 
  
  

     Current Ring Size:
     RingInfo:
        RX: 4096
        RX Mini: 0
        RX Jumbo: 0
        TX: 4096
  
     Preset Maximum Ring Size:
     RingInfo:
        Max RX: 4096
        Max RX Mini: 0
        Max RX Jumbo: 0
        Max TX: 4096

• Flow control is already enabled for the specified NIC.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

The buffers of the ASIC slice/physical switch port have reached 90% utilization.

Resolution

The buffer of the physical switch port has reached its threshold; contact the switch hardware vendor to check if there is an option to increase it.

Additional Information

How to Enable Tx/Rx hardware flow control