What is the maximum amount of bandwidth that can be reserved using Network I/O Control on a physical 10 Gbps adapter?

When using Network I/O Control (NIOC) in VMware vSphere, it allows you to manage and allocate bandwidth for network traffic on a host's physical network adapters. With a physical adapter that has a maximum capacity of 10 Gbps, the NIOC feature enables administrators to define bandwidth shares and reservations for different traffic types.

The maximum amount of bandwidth that can be reserved using NIOC is inherently tied to the total available capacity of the network adapter. This means that while you can set reservations, they cannot exceed the total available bandwidth of the adapter. Therefore, for a physical adapter with a capacity of 10 Gbps, it is feasible to reserve up to that maximum when properly configured, but realistic considerations about other traffic and configurations often lead to lower actual usage.

The selection of 7.5 Gbps as the answer likely reflects typical real-world scenarios where an organization may wish to reserve a high portion of the bandwidth for critical applications while still leaving some bandwidth available for other types of traffic. This honors the necessity for network adaptability in a shared network environment.

Other figures like 2.5 Gbps or 5.0 Gbps represent lower reservations that may be used to ensure redundancy and performance for various workloads, but they do not