Unable to increase ring buffer size of vmnic

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Unable to increase ring buffer size of vmnic using below command:

esxcli network nic ring current set -n vmnic# -r 4096 -t 4096

• Following error seen when running above command:

Error: Unable to complete Sysinfo operation. Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.: Not supported: VSI node (233:VSI_NODE_net_pNics_firmware_ringParams) 

• Using Cisco UCSC-C220-M6S Rackmount Server and Cisco Systems Inc Cisco VIC Ethernet NIC / NENIC driver version 2.0.17.0 Firmware 5.3(5.81)

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

Ring RX/TX buffer size cannot be updated on ESXi Host directly when using Cisco UCS. These settings are hard coded in the UCS Manager VIC profile.

Resolution

• Use the UCS Manager to set the VIC rings sizes for RX and TX. Contact hardware vendor (Cisco) for assistance.
• After setting the ring size for RX and TX, confirm settings with:

esxcli network nic ring current get -n vmnic#

esxcli network nic ring preset get -n vmnic#

Additional Information

Troubleshooting NIC errors and other network traffic faults in ESXi