Network counters at the VM level
The following screenshot shows the counters vCenter provides for network at the VM layer. The counters are available at each individual vNIC level and at the VM level. Most VMs will only have one vNIC, so the data at the VM and vNIC levels will be identical. The vNICs are named using the 400x convention.
This means that the first vNIC is 4000, the second vNIC is 4001, and so on:
VM network counters
As usual, let's approach the counters, starting with contention. There is no latency counter, so you cannot track how long it takes for a packet to reach its destination. There are, however, counters that track dropped packets. Dropped packets need to be retransmitted and therefore increase network latency from the application point of view. vCenter does not provide a counter to track packet retransmits.
vRealize Operations provides a latency counter, which uses packet drops as an indicator. Using a percentage is certainly easier than dealing with the raw counters...
