I have a question about my test lab. It's more to understand the concept more than apply this into production:

I have an ESXi with few VMs linux/windows configured and I'd like to use VMWare converter to create backups.

To speedup the process I decided to create a Windows VM on the same ESXi host where I've installed Windows 7 and VMWare Converter.

The Host has a gigabit card but it's currently connected to a 100Mb FD port. Windows 7 sees a 1gb card connected.

When I do the backup using VMWare converter I specify the host IP as source and destination, so I thought the copy could be faster then use my laptop across the network.

Well, to cut a long sotry short: I get dreadful performance (4Mb/sec). I'm a buit confused on this because despite the fact that the host is running 100Mb communication between VMs and hosts shouldn't (correct me if I'm wrong) have any limitation instead.

I did tweak windows 7 to optimise network performane but I got just a little improvement. i still need 4 hours to back up a 50Gb (thin) VM.

Additionally I wanted to ask: Would jumbo frame help in this? I know that jumbo frame have to be supported end to end, and the network switch where the host is currently connected doesn't support this, but I was wondering:

1) Does ESXi host support jumbo frames at all?

2) Can I enable it somehow?

3) If I do so, I guess bulk transfert between VMs and host would improve, but would this affect the communication going through the real switch as this doesn't do jumbo?

Thanks for reading