The NFS server (4.8 release) from which the exports are mounted is a 
virtual guest on the ESXi 4.1 host.
Transfer rates to/from the virtual NFS server guest to another guest are 
a little faster on average (which makes some modicum of sense in my 
mind...) than from the NFS guest to a physically separate machine.

The VM guests are using em(4) if that's any help.

On 10-11-17 9:28 PM, Steven Surdock wrote:
quoted text
> My OBSD (4.8-stable) virtual machine (ESXi 3.5) to OBSD (4.8-stable)
> physical machine isn't too bad:
>
> ssurdock@builder03$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/VMware/test.dat bs=16k
> count=>
> 32000+0 records in
> 32000+0 records out
> 524288000 bytes transferred in 19.466 secs (26933331 bytes/sec)
>
> But, from the ESXi console it sucks.
>
> Was your NFS server physical or virtual?
>
> -Steve S.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-misc@openbsd.org [mailto:owner-misc@openbsd.org] On Behalf
> Of
>> Emille Blanc
>> Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2010 11:59 PM
>> To: misc@openbsd.org
>> Subject: Re: ESXi client / NFS server performance
>>
>> This may be a bit late, but for what it's worth, 4.8 -release as an
> ESXi
>> 4.1 client without any knob tweaking and pf running the default
> ruleset.
>> Haven't done anything with ESXi 3.5 though, so I'm not sure what to
> say on
>> that front.
>>
>> -----e@memnarch:/home $ uname -a
>> OpenBSD memnarch.sarlok.com 4.8 GENERIC#136 i386 -----e@memnarch:/home
> $
>> sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/test.dat bs=16k
>> count=32000
>> 32000+0 records in
>> 32000+0 records out
>> 524288000 bytes transferred in 15.163 secs (34576797 bytes/sec) -----
>> e@memnarch:/home $ sudo dd of=/dev/null if=/home/test.dat bs=16k
>> count=32000
>> 32000+0 records in
>> 32000+0 records out
>> 524288000 bytes transferred in 13.937 secs (37617959 bytes/sec) -----
>> e@memnarch:/home $ mount | grep exports 172.16.100.250:/exports/home
> on
>> /home type nfs (v3, udp, timeo=100,
>> retrans=101)
>> -----e@memnarch:/home $ dmesg | head -10 OpenBSD 4.8 (GENERIC) #136:
> Mon
>> Aug 16 09:06:23 MDT 2010
>>       deraadt@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
>> cpu0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5504 @ 2.00GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class)
> 2
>> GHz
>> cpu0:
>>
> FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,
> CF
>> LUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,SSE3,SSSE3,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,POPCNT
>> real mem  = 536375296 (511MB)
>> avail mem = 517644288 (493MB)
>> mainbus0 at root
>> bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+ BIOS, date 09/22/09, BIOS32 rev. 0 @
> 0xfd780,
>> SMBIOS rev. 2.4 @ 0xe0010 (98 entries)
>> bios0: vendor Phoenix Technologies LTD version "6.00" date 09/22/2009
>> bios0: VMware, Inc. VMware Virtual Platform
>


-- 
http://blog.sarlok.com/
Sometimes all the left hand needs to know is where the right hand is, so 
it knows where to point the blame.