VMware offers several types of virtual network adapters that you can add to your virtual machines. Depending on the operating system you install it will select a default adapter when you create a VM. For Windows the default adapter type is the Intel E1000. There is however an adapter that will give you a better performance, which is the VMware VMXNET3 adapter. More information about choosing the right adapter, supported operating systems and the performance benefits of this adapter can be found in these locations:

In this article I would like to share a few ideas on how to setup a lab environment for vSphere. When I deliver VMware-training it is a frequently asked question by my students how they could run the software in their own lab-environment. For those who own multiple physical servers on which they can run ESXi it is not too difficult. But when your resources are limited you might need to look at other possibilities.