Ok so I’m a bit tardy in this notification, but VMware released a new version of the Ethernet driver for the 10Gbps NIC that’s in the HP BL490c G6 servers, and other brands as well. Technically the update is for Broadcom NetExtreme II BCM57710/BCM57711/BCM57711E NICs. In HP terms this is the HP NC532i and NC532m.
You can download the update here. Although the release notes are nearly useless, you can find them here.
Absolutely no mention of fixes or enhancements. But I did find some interesting details about the support for NetQueue. Apparently the driver supports NetQueue, but only enables one queue out of the box. The readme gives you some commands that increase the number of NetQueues.
They say the optimal number of queues is equal to the number of CPUs. But they aren’t clear if they mean sockets, cores, or execution units. That could make the difference between 2 and 16 on some servers. The Intel NetQueue article specifically calls out the number of cores, and has a maximum value of 16.
