Virtual Machine Queue

Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) is a network adapter feature that provides some performance benefit in a virtualized environment. VMQ enables the physical network adapter to provide virtual queues for each virtual machine running on the host. This enables the hypervisor to pass external traffic directly to each virtual machine without routing through the management operating system first. This feature should not be confused with Virtual Machine Chimney, which is a separate function that provides TCP offloading features from the guest virtual CPU to the physical network adapter.

If the adapters used on a host machine allow this feature, it should be enabled for optimal performance in Lync Server 2013. Because media traffic is extremely sensitive to latency or delays, any optimizations at the network layer can lead to increased virtual machine performance. Adapters do not support an unlimited number of virtual machine queues, so VMQ should be enabled only for virtual machines that receive a heavy amount of traffic.