You are responsible for recommending an adapter type for NICs on a FortiGate VM that will run on an ESXi Hypervisor.
Your recommendation must consider performance as the main concern, cost is not a factor.
Which adapter type for the NICs will you recommend?
The Physical Function (PF) PCI Passthrough is recommended for a FortiGate VM running on an ESXi Hypervisor when performance is the main concern and cost is not a factor. PF PCI Passthrough allows for direct access to the physical Network Interface Card (NIC), which eliminates the virtualization overhead and provides the highest possible network performance. This setup achieves greater performance than virtualized network adapters like VMXNET3 or E1000, making it the best choice when performance is the primary consideration.
https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortigate-private-cloud/6.4.0/vmware-esxi-administration-guide/553137/sr-iov
Answer is D if cost is not a factor
GUY this should be C VMXNET3 is a paravirtualized network interface card that is optimized for performance in virtual machines and supports features such as multiqueue support, Receive Side Scaling (RSS), Large Receive Offload (LRO), IPv6 offloads, and MSI/MSI-X interrupt delivery. Native ESXi networking means that the FortiGate VM uses the standard virtual switch (vSwitch) or distributed virtual switch (dvSwitch) provided by the ESXi hypervisor to connect to the physical network. This option can provide high performance and compatibility for NICs on a FortiGate VM without requiring additional hardware or software components. References: https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortigate/7.0.0/vm-installation-for-vmware-esxi/19662/installing-fortigate-vm-on-vmware-esxi https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortigate/7.0.0/vm-installation-for-vmware-esxi/19662/networking
For performance considerations in a virtualized environment like ESXi, the recommended adapter type for NICs on a FortiGate VM would be: C. Native ESXi Networking with VMXNET3 The VMXNET3 adapter type is optimized for performance and is well-suited for virtualized environments. It typically outperforms other adapter types like the E1000 or E1000e. VMXNET3 takes advantage of VMware's paravirtualization technology and offers features such as hardware offload and enhanced driver support, which can result in improved network performance and lower CPU utilization compared to other adapter types. While Virtual Function (VF) and Physical Function (PF) PCI Passthrough are options that can provide direct hardware access for specific use cases, they are more complex to set up and may not be necessary unless you have very specific requirements that demand direct access to physical NICs. For general performance and ease of use in a virtualized environment, VMXNET3 is the recommended choice.
agree with Ama6
VFs are actual PCIe hardware resources and only a limited number of VFs are available for each PF. https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortigate-private-cloud/6.4.0/vmware-esxi-administration-guide/553137/sr-iov
PF provides the ability for PCI Passthrough, but requires an entire Network Interface Card (NIC) for a VM. It can usually achieve greater performance than a Virtual Function (VF) based SR-IOV. PF is also expensive. While VF allows one NIC to be shared among multiple guests VMs, PF is allocated to one port on a VM. https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortigate/7.4.2/administration-guide/632344/pf-and-vf-sr-iov-driver-and-virtual-spu-support