Hello everyone!
I need a bit of help with packet drops and vDS port statistics.
The problem is:
I observe millions of Exception Ingress packets on all 4 up-links of my single vDS switch and probably tens of millions Dropped Egress packets on all ports of vDS regardless of a port-group they belong.
What I have looked into:
- I can see these drops on a VM-level statistics (Performance>Network) as well, but only for RX.
- I don't experience any connectivity problems at application level although (no packet loss in guest OS logs or during ping).
- Physical switch statistics reports no error/discard packets.
- Nothing meaningful in vSpehre logs
- Low traffic and low VM load
- No warnings reported on vSphere, vDS switch health monitoring is enabled and reports normal status
This is why I would like to ask several questions:
- what does "Dropped Egress packets" actually mean in terms of vDS stats? what are these packets and why are they dropped
- how to reset these packet counters?
- is there any low-level network diagnostic tools available for vSphere/ESXi?
Versions: ESXi 5.1u1, vCenter 5.1u1
I would highly appreciate if someone could give a clue of what's going on or at least advise a direction for further investigation.
Thanks.