Latest Porxmox 9.xx with i226-v extremely low performance

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phanos

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Oct 23, 2015
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I am running latest proxmox 9 VE (latest updates) on a i7-8700T cpu, 16GB ram and 1TB nvme hard drive. I have install in the proxmox machine a quad 2.5 GB i226-v network adapter for using it in a opnsense vm but I am unable to get any performance from that card.

I have tried both pci passthought and virtio on the VM but both have serious issues.

1) When using it thought virtio the speeds that I am getting is between 1- 100Mb speed (out of the 1GB connection that I have from my ISP)
2) When using it as passthough I am getting almost my 1GB connection but I am having problems with stability. I am getting errors under opnsense.

I have disable ASPM in bios and in boot of proxmox and eee is already off but nothing I do it seems to make this card work under the current proxmox version.

The strange thing is that even when I tried to use one of the 4 quad ports of the card for management of the proxmox server I am seeing slugglish performace even thought ssh connection on my LAN.

The card seems legit (intel original as I can tell).

Is this card not supported in the latest Proxmox version and I should return it and is there something else I could do? Could I install another driver for this card under Proxmox (if there is such drive of course)?


Phanos
 
Did you manage to find a solution?

I'm also experiencing the exact same thing with an i226-v, 4 port 2.5gb NIC.

It's 100% not the NIC itself as I had it tested on a different PC running Windows and it worked just fine there, but on my Proxmox PC it struggles a lot, even just pinging another device into it, the latency goes from 200ms up to 1000ms+.


EDIT:
After literal DAYS of banging my head against the wall, I managed to sort it.
I had to disable IOMMU on the Bios. Not ideal, but since I was not using IOMMU anyway, it will do for now.

Still interested in seeing if people find another solution.
 
Last edited:
Hi leonnaki,

I have replaced the i226-v card with an old 82576NS Gigabit Network card that I had home. This card has only two network ports (1Gbit each) but since my ISP is only 1GB and I really only need two network ports at the moment it suffices for now. After replacing the i226-v and even run it under virtio mode (not tried pass-thought yet) I get constant speeds of 930Mbits downloads and 250+ Mbits upload speed. My ping delay has dropped from 500-800 ms to just below 4 ms. So for now I have no incentive to go back to i226-v card and I have shelved it.

Hopefully in the future and update driver or system update will come along and fix the issues but right now I advice everyone TO STAY AWAY FROM THIS CARD.

if you are still interested to find a solution for this card you could try a similar OS to see if indeed is the drivers that are causing the issue or something else. Proxmox 9 is based on debian 13 (if I am not wrong) so it should use the same drivers as that one. You could try Debian 13 and see the results. If it works at Debian 13 and not Proxmox 9 (on the same machine with the same hardware and BIOS settings) then it is possible that the issues of the card are being trigger by the proxmox kernel or something else in the proxmox installation. Windows is an entire different OS and it is propable not good idea to compare it with Proxmox.

Another option is to try and update the firmware of the card to address the issues. I read online that intel has issued an update firmware that could fix/mediate a lot of the issues mentioned earlier.

!!HOWEVER THE PROCESS OF UPDATING THE FIRMWARE SHOULD BE AVOIDED IN MOST SCENARIOS SINCE IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG IT COULD PERMANENTLY BRICK THE I226-V AND MAKE IT UNUSABLE!!

In addition to that Intel ONLY makes available the i226-v firmware to OEM partners. So even if you find one firmware online to upgrade your card is not always 100% certain it will work or even fix the issues described earlier so if you go down this path be extra carefull. In my case I did found one firmware but so far I have not tried it so I can not comment wether it works or not.

Sorry for not being more help but I am on the same boat as you on this. The best bet for you I thing it to replace the card with something for reliable.
 
leonnaki said:
Did you manage to find a solution?

I'm also experiencing the exact same thing with an i226-v, 4 port 2.5gb NIC.

It's 100% not the NIC itself as I had it tested on a different PC running Windows and it worked just fine there, but on my Proxmox PC it struggles a lot, even just pinging another device into it, the latency goes from 200ms up to 1000ms+.


EDIT:
After literal DAYS of banging my head against the wall, I managed to sort it.
I had to disable IOMMU on the Bios. Not ideal, but since I was not using IOMMU anyway, it will do for now.

Still interested in seeing if people find another solution.
Click to expand...
Hi leannaki,

glad that I see you find a solution to your issue. However disabling IOMMU in Proxmox/Virtual environment is not the best idea since disabling IOMMU it will introduce a number of limitations including the ability to pass-though pci devices to VMs in the future.
 
Hey phanos!

Yeah man I fully agree with you, disabling IOMMU is not great, and I'll be swapping this card out eventually, but it will work in a pinch.

I'm struggling to find a find another card with similar specs using a different chipset.
Found one using Realtek but I've seen many a comment advising steering away from those, so I feel like I'm standing between the cross and the sword...


Cheers and better luck with cards in the future!
Leo
 
leonnaki said:
Hey phanos!

Yeah man I fully agree with you, disabling IOMMU is not great, and I'll be swapping this card out eventually, but it will work in a pinch.

I'm struggling to find a find another card with similar specs using a different chipset.
Found one using Realtek but I've seen many a comment advising steering away from those, so I feel like I'm standing between the cross and the sword...


Cheers and better luck with cards in the future!
Leo
Click to expand...
Yes try stay away from realtek too since (at least) some models they do not have great support under Linux and they start having issues when push to their limits.

Chears

Phanos
 
ok just a small update on the issue. I have just finished updating the firmware on the i226-v card from version 2.23 to version 2.25 in the hopes that it will fix the issues of very slow performance. The update went successful and all 4 ports reports the firmware version is now 2.25 but unfortunately for my setup it did not solved the issue.

Regards

Phanos
 
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