Fix iSCSI Latency on Dell R815 with Broadcom NICs in VMware ESXi

Our new Dell PowerEdge R815 hosts had strange latency on iSCSI traffic running over Broadcom NICs on a dedicated, segregated storage LAN.

The Fix: Update the Broadcom NetXtreme II Driver

The solution was the updated Broadcom NetXtreme II driver bundle:

BCM-NetXtremeII-5.0-offline_bundle-940344.zip

1. Import the offline bundle into VMware Update Manager.
2. Attach it to the hosts in a baseline and remediate.
3. Reboot each host.

After one reboot, the latency was gone and everyone was happy.