Paravirtual adapters with VMware Workstation

Did you know that you can use VMware paravirtual VMXNET3 and PVSCSI adapters with VMs running on VMware Workstation? Paravirtual adapters will improve networking and disk IO performance by using valuable CPU cycles more efficiently.

VMware paravirtual adapters are not available through VMware Workstation GUI, but you can enable them by tweaking Virtual Machine’s VMX configuration file with notepad. I have tested this with VMware Workstation 8, this may work also with Workstation 7.0 but I cannot guarantee it.

- Create a new VM or use existing VM, upgrade VMware Tools to latest available. If you wish to use PVSCSI adapter you must install PVSCSI driver in VMware Tools installer, it is not included in default install.

- Browse to VM configuration folder and open it’s .vmx configuration file in notepad

VMXNET3 network adapter

To change network device to VMXNET3 search for ethernet configuration option

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

change device type to vmxnet3

ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"

And you may save .vmx file, VMXNET3 adapter is now available for use.

Paravirtual SCSI adapter

Changing SCSI adapter type is a bit trickier, process depends on the OS of your VM and which drivers it has available as standard. With Windows you need to add PVSCSI adapter as second SCSI adapter before you can remove LSI one, to do this you need to add new hard disk to your VM if you currently have only one as your system and data disk.

Windows version on VMware Tools default installation does not include PVSCSI driver, you must do custom install and configure PVSCSI driver to be installed. If you are unsure that you have PVSCSI driver installed re-run VMware Tools installer and select “modify” to verify.

Once you have necessary drivers installed and new hard disk for your VM open .vmx configuration file in notepad and search for new disk configuration parameters

scsi0:1.fileName = "TestVM-0.vmdk"

Edit second hard disk configuration to change its SCSI ID to 1:0 and add configuration for new PVSCSI controller

scsi1.present = "TRUE"
scsi1.virtualDev = "pvscsi"
scsi1:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi1:0.fileName = "TestVM-0.vmdk"

With these settings you can now boot up your Windows VM, once necessary drivers have been installed you may replace system disk LSI Logic adapter with pvscsi by editing .vmx configuration file.

scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"

lsilogic may also be lsisas1068, depending on the Windows version in your VM.

And there you have it, VMware paravirtual adapters VMXNET3 and PVSCSI in VMware Workstation VM.