Use vSphere Network I/O Control to allocate network bandwidth to business-critical applications and to resolve situations where several types of traffic compete for common resources.
What to read next
About vSphere Network I/O Control Version 3 vSphere Network I/O Control version 3 introduces a mechanism to reserve bandwidth for system traffic based on the capacity of the physical adapters on a host. It enables fine-grained resource control at the VM network adapter level similar to the model that you use for allocating CPU and memory resources..
Upgrade Network I/O Control to Version 3 on a vSphere Distributed Switch If you have upgraded a vSphere Distributed Switch to version 6.0.0 without converting Network I/O Control to version 3, you can upgrade Network I/O Control to use the enhanced model for bandwidth allocation to system traffic and to individual virtual machines.
Enable Network I/O Control on a vSphere Distributed Switch Enable network resource management on a vSphere Distributed Switch to guarantee minimum bandwidth to system traffic for vSphere features and to virtual machine traffic.
Bandwidth Allocation for System Traffic You can configure Network I/O Control to allocate certain amount of bandwidth for traffic generated by vSphere Fault Tolerance, vSphere vMotion, and so on.
Bandwidth Allocation for Virtual Machine Traffic Version 3 of Network I/O Control lets you configure bandwidth requirements for individual virtual machines. You can also use network resource pools where you can assign a bandwidth quota from the aggregated reservation for the virtual machine traffic and then allocate bandwidth from the pool to individual virtual machines.
Move a Physical Adapter Out the Scope of Network I/O Control Under certain conditions you might need to exclude physical adapters with low capacity from the bandwidth allocation model of Network I/O Control version 3.
Working with Network I/O Control Version 2 On a vSphere Distributed Switch 5.x, and on a vSphere Distributed Switch upgraded to 6.0 that does not have Network I/O Control enhanced to version 3, you can ensure that system traffic and virtual machines receive required bandwidth for their operation by using the resource pool model of Network I/O Control version 2.