zfs, nfs and zil

[Rick Macklem]

> 
> I'm mounting the FreeBSD-server from a couple of vmware esxi 4.1
> servers using nfs, but when there is alot of i/o the server becomes
> unresponsive, easily triggered by installing ie. ms-sql. The server
> itself is up but is not reachable from the network. When I take the
> nic down and up again connection to the network is reestablished
> (ip-wise).
> 
Others have made good comments w.r.t. the zil, however if all IP
activity on the server has stopped (and is fixed via "ifconfig XX down;
ifconfig XX up") it sounds more like a network device driver issue to
me?

So, is it just NFS that wedges or all IP activity and does NFS come
back to life after the "ifconfig XX up"?

rick