I was at a unrelated training course and just happened to mention to the tutor about having just moved from E1000 to Netflex 3 adapters due to dropped packet issues.
He said
“You know about the dropped packet issues in netfex 3 don’t you?
Err no?
“You know about the dropped packet issues in your HP Blade servers using 10GB Emulex adapters don’t you?
Err no?
So here are a couple of links if you are having issues with dropped packets.
The first is a known issue for windows 2008 R2 and is VMWare specific
Large packet loss at the guest OS level on the VMXNET3 vNIC in ESXi 5.x / 4.x (2039495)
The second is more concerning as it appears there has been issues with a bug in the Emulex firmware for more than a year. It is an issue on VMWare and Hyper-V
Just waiting on HP for updated drivers for HP BL460c Gen 8 blade servers.
The workaround is to disable the VMQ feature, which has a tad of a downside, “It is estimated that disabling VMQ will significantly reduce throughput going through the network adapter.”
Emulex driver and firmware update
Microsoft Windows 2012/2012 R2 Hyper-V VMs losing network connectivity: a workaround
Additional Background on the VMQ Issue with Emulex and HP