Page Comparison

...

This guide uses an LSI 9211-8i/LSI 9311-8i controller; presented via DirectPath I/O on ESXi 5.5/6.5. The controller was flashed to IT-firmware before using it on this system.

...

After the reboot; it's time to configure your VM. We'll create a custom VM using the following settings:

• Solaris 11 - Other 64-bitbits

• Add plenty of RAM. In my case - I used 8GB

• Root disk on a local datastore

• LSI Logic Parallel controller (pvscsi is working fine, need ignore VMware message about issue with boot drives)

• 40GB disk

• vmxnet3 network adapter 

...

$ sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools
$ sudo svcadm enable open-vm-tools

...

Optimization: NTPD

To synchronize the time, you can enable this feature in the vm settings on vmware.

Or configure the ntp service on vm.

$ sudo apt install ntp
$ sudo svcadm enable ntp
$ sudo ntpdate 0.debian.pool.ntp.org
$ sudo svcadm clear ntp
$ #check ntp
$ ntpq -p

Optimization: Controller Load Balancing

Next step is optimising the kernel drivers for the LSI 9211-8i card I'm using. This next step greatly optimises performance for SAS drives. As root; open the following file:

...

load-balance="logical-block";

...

Optimization: vmxnet3 driver - jumbo frames

In this particular setup - I'm using jumbo frames to improve large I/O performance.
A couple of modifications are needed to successfully cope with this. Namely disabling Large Segment Offload (LSO) and tuning the send and receive buffers; which are too small for 10gbit/Jumbo Frames. Open an editor to your likes (in the example - we're using vi):

...