• Use the VMXNET3 virtual adapter and reduce the usage of the E1000e adapter as much as possible. For more information on adding or modifying a virtual machine's virtual network interfaces, see the Change the Virtual Network Adapter (NIC) Configuration in the vSphere Web Client or Change the Virtual Network Adapter (NIC) Configuration in the vSphere Client section in the VMware vSphere 5.5 Virtual Machine Administration guide.
   
• In the virtual machines that use the E1000e adapter, disable RSS in the guest operating system or replace the E1000e adapter with the VMXNET3 adapter. Disabling RSS may have performance implications for your virtual machine. For more information, see Poor network performance or high network latency on Windows virtual machines (2008925).

Identifying the virtual machines that use E1000e network adapters

1. Open the vSphere PowerCLI.
2. Connect to vCenter Server using the command:
   
   Connect-VIHost vCenterServerHostnameOrIPAddress
   
   Note: In PowerCLI 5.5, the command is:
   
   Connect-VIServer vCenterServerHostnameOrIPAddress
    
3. Generate a list of virtual machines with E1000e network adapters using this command:
   
   ForEach( $VM in (Get-VM) ) { $VM|Where{ $VM|Get-NetworkAdapter|Where{ $_.ExtensionData -like "*e1000e" } } }
   
   You see output similar to:
   
   Name PowerState NumCPUs MemoryGB
---- ---------- ------- --------
VirtualMachineA PoweredOn 2 4.000
VirtualMachineB PoweredOff 1 2.000
   
   Each virtual machine in this list has one or more E1000e virtual network interfaces.
    
4. Perform one of these options:
    
   • Use the VMXNET3 virtual adapter and reduce the usage of the E1000e series adapter. For more information on adding or modifying a virtual machine's virtual network interfaces, see Change the Virtual Network Adapter (NIC) Configuration in the vSphere Web Client section in the Configuring Virtual Machine Hardware in the vSphere Web Client Guide.
   • In virtual machines using the e1000e adapter, disable RSS or configure the RSS multiple rx queue to 1 in the guest operating system. For more information, see Poor network performance or high network latency on Windows virtual machines (2008925).