Yes, There is difference between both SIOC and Adaptative Queuing for how they manage qdepth on esxi host. SIOC take prioritization of VM into consideration in term of assigned share value regardless of which host vm's are residing on whereas Adaptative Queuing is not that smart and work at storage device(LUN) level. When queue full state arises queue depth of device in question is halved and post congestion increase in incremental order.
Controlling LUN queue depth throttling in VMware ESX/ESXi (1008113) | VMware KB
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Best Regards,
Deepak Koshal
CNE|CLA|CWMA|VCP4|VCP5|CCAH