How can I maximize ethernet speeds?

[ChiefEngrNY]

OK... I've got an HP server with 2x Quad Core 2.5GHz Xeons, 32GB of RAM, and a Broadcom GigE Interface which has Proxmox 1.9 installed on it. (And yes, I'm connected to a GigE Network.) I have three different CentOS 5.8 and 6.2 based VMs running. The ethernet performance between the VMs and the outside world is AWFUL. I am seeing sub-megabit speeds.

Are there some ways to get this speed up closer to the 700-900 Mbps range? Any specifics or document links will be greatly appreciated.

Also, I need to bring up another system on identical hardware but will be running a linux VM along with three or four different Windows 2K and Windows XP VMs which are going to need to communicate between each other at these near Gigabit speeds. Am I better going with Proxmox 1.9, 2.0, or something completely different?

Thanks in advance for any advice, pointers, recommendations, and the benifit of your experience and skills.

 

[udo]

OK... I've got an HP server with 2x Quad Core 2.5GHz Xeons, 32GB of RAM, and a Broadcom GigE Interface which has Proxmox 1.9 installed on it. (And yes, I'm connected to a GigE Network.) I have three different CentOS 5.8 and 6.2 based VMs running. The ethernet performance between the VMs and the outside world is AWFUL. I am seeing sub-megabit speeds.

Are there some ways to get this speed up closer to the 700-900 Mbps range? Any specifics or document links will be greatly appreciated.

Also, I need to bring up another system on identical hardware but will be running a linux VM along with three or four different Windows 2K and Windows XP VMs which are going to need to communicate between each other at these near Gigabit speeds. Am I better going with Proxmox 1.9, 2.0, or something completely different?

Thanks in advance for any advice, pointers, recommendations, and the benifit of your experience and skills.

Hi,
to classify the speed use iperf for both directions to see how much is possible (extern <-> host; extern <-> vm).

Perhaps switch-port settings?

Which VM-NIC driver do you use? virtio is the right one for linux VMs (for windows also, but sometime you get trouble with virtio on windows and e1000 is much more stable).
Normaly 940Mbit/s is no problem from extern to an VM - that's not too bad, I think.

Udo