Virtual NIC Network packet drops led by insufficient RX queue limits

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

Due to insufficient RX queue limits, the Virtual NIC Network packet drops will be found.

When Receive Side Scaling (RSS) is active on a physical NIC,
packets from different queues might need to be queued before they are processed. 

When a virtual NIC on a multiple vCPU VMs is configured with the vmx option
  ethernetX.pnicFeatures = 4

If the RX queue limits and bounds are not sufficient, you might see packets drop and performance issues in VMs.

Environment

VMware ESXi 8.0

Resolution

This issue is resolved in the VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 3i (Build 25205845)
The fix increases the default Vmxnet3RxQueueBound parameter from 256 to 1024 to reduce the chances for such packet drops.

Additional Information

VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 3i Release Notes
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vsphere/vsphere/8-0/release-notes/esxi-update-and-patch-release-notes/vsphere-esxi-80u3i-release-notes.html