Book Image

vSphere High Performance Cookbook - Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Kevin Elder, Christopher Kusek, Prasenjit Sarkar
Book Image

vSphere High Performance Cookbook - Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Kevin Elder, Christopher Kusek, Prasenjit Sarkar

Overview of this book

vSphere is a mission-critical piece of software for many businesses. It is a complex tool, and incorrect design and deployment can create performance related issues that can negatively affect the business. This book is focused on solving these problems as well as providing best practices and performance-enhancing techniques. This edition is fully updated to include all the new features in version 6.5 as well as the latest tools and techniques to keep vSphere performing at its best. This book starts with interesting recipes, such as the interaction of vSphere 6.5 components with physical layers such as CPU, memory, and networking. Then we focus on DRS, resource control design, and vSphere cluster design. Next, you’ll learn about storage performance design and how it works with VMware vSphere 6.5. Moving on, you will learn about the two types of vCenter installation and the benefits of each. Lastly, the book covers performance tools that help you get the most out of your vSphere installation. By the end of this book, you will be able to identify, diagnose, and troubleshoot operational faults and critical performance issues in vSphere 6.5.

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Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Title Page
Credits
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Customer Feedback
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
CPU Performance Design
CPU Performance Design
Introduction
Critical performance consideration - VMM scheduler
CPU scheduler - processor topology/cache-aware
Ready time - warning sign
Spotting CPU overcommitment
Fighting guest CPU saturation in SMP VMs
Controlling CPU resources using resource settings
What is most important to monitor in CPU performance
CPU performance best practices
2
Memory Performance Design
Memory Performance Design
Introduction
Virtual memory reclamation techniques
Monitoring a host-swapping activity
Monitoring a host-ballooning activity
Keeping memory free for VMkernel
Key memory performance counters to monitor
What counters not to use
Identifying when memory is the problem
Analyzing host and VM memory
Memory performance best practices
Introduction
Virtual memory reclamation techniques
Monitoring a host-swapping activity
Monitoring a host-ballooning activity
Keeping memory free for VMkernel
Key memory performance counters to monitor
What counters not to use
Identifying when memory is the problem
Analyzing host and VM memory
Memory performance best practices
3
Networking Performance Design
Networking Performance Design
Introduction
Designing a vSphere Standard Switch for load balancing and failover
Designing a vSphere Distributed Switch for load balancing and failover
What to know when offloading checksum
Selecting the correct virtual network adapter
Improving performance through VMDirectPath I/O
Improving performance through NetQueue
Improving network performance using the SplitRx mode for multicast traffic
Designing a multi-NIC vMotion
Improving network performance using network I/O control
Monitoring network capacity and performance matrix
4
DRS, SDRS, and Resource Control Design
DRS, SDRS, and Resource Control Design
Introduction
Using DRS algorithm guidelines
Using resource pool guidelines
Avoiding the use of a resource pool as a folder structure
Choosing the best SIOC latency threshold
Using storage capability and policy-driven storage
Anti-affinity rules in the SDRS cluster
Avoiding the use of the SDRS I/O metric and array-based automatic tiering together
Using VMware SIOC and array-based automatic tiering together
5
vSphere Cluster Design
vSphere Cluster Design
Introduction
Trade-off factors while designing scale-up and scale-out clusters
Using VM Monitoring
vSphere Fault Tolerance design and its impact
DPM and its impact
Choosing the reserved cluster failover capacity
Choosing the correct vSphere HA cluster size
6
Storage Performance Design
Storage Performance Design
Introduction
Designing the host for a highly available and high-performance storage
Designing a highly available and high-performance iSCSI SAN
Designing a highly available and high-performance FC storage
Performance impact of queuing on the storage array and host
Factors that affect storage performance
Using VAAI or VASA to boost storage performance
Selecting the right VM disk type
Monitoring command queuing
Identifying a severely overloaded storage
Setting up VVols
Introduction to vSAN
Health check for vSAN
7
Designing vCenter on Windows for Best Performance
Designing vCenter on Windows for Best Performance
Introduction
Things to bear in mind while designing the vCenter platform
Deploying Platform Services Controller
Deploying the vCenter server components
Designing vCenter server for redundancy
Designing a highly available vCenter database
vCenter database size and location affects performance
Using vSphere 6.x Certificate Manager for certificates
Designing vCenter server for Auto Deploy
8
Designing VCSA for Best Performance
Designing VCSA for Best Performance
Introduction
Deploying Platform Services Controller
Deploying VCSA server components
Setting up vCenter Server High Availability
Adding VCSA to your Windows domain and adding users
Checking VCSA performance using vimtop
Checking VCSA performance using the GUI
9
Virtual Machine and Virtual Environment Performance Design
Virtual Machine and Virtual Environment Performance Design
Introduction
Setting the right time in Guest OS
Virtual NUMA considerations
Choosing the SCSI controller for storage
Impact of VM swap file placement
Using large pages in VMs
Guest OS networking considerations
When you should or should not virtualize an application
Measuring the environment's performance
10
Performance Tools
Performance Tools
Introduction
PowerCLI - introduction
PowerCLI scripts
PowerCLI for Docker
HCIBench
Runecast
Iometer
VMware IOInsight

Keeping memory free for VMkernel

The amount of memory VMkernel will try to keep free can be set through the Mem.MemMinFreePct parameter. MemMinFreePct determines the amount of memory that VMkernel should keep free. vSphere 4.1 introduced a dynamic threshold for the Soft, Hard, and Low states to set appropriate thresholds and prevent VM performance issues while protecting VMkernel. The different states, based on %pRAM, which is still free, determines what type of memory reclamation techniques would be used.

For MemMinFreePct, using a default value of 6 percent can be inefficient when 256 gigabytes, 512 gigabytes, or even 1 TB hosts are becoming more mainstream. Having a 6 percent threshold on 512 gigabytes results in 30 gigabytes idling most of the time. However, not all customers use large systems; some prefer to scale out rather than scale up. If you choose to scale out and have more servers with less RAM in each system, a 6 percent MemMinFreePct threshold might be suitable. To have the...

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