Book Image

vSphere High Performance Cookbook

Book Image

vSphere High Performance Cookbook

Overview of this book

VMware vSphere is the key virtualization technology in today's market. vSphere is a complex tool and incorrect design and deployment can create performance-related problems. vSphere High Performance Cookbook is focused on solving those problems as well as providing best practices and performance-enhancing techniques. vSphere High Performance Cookbook offers a comprehensive understanding of the different components of vSphere and the interaction of these components with the physical layer which includes the CPU, memory, network, and storage. If you want to improve or troubleshoot vSphere performance then this book is for you! vSphere High Performance Cookbook will teach you how to tune and grow a VMware vSphere 5 infrastructure. This book focuses on tuning, optimizing, and scaling the infrastructure using the vSphere Client graphical user interface. This book will enable the reader with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to build and run a high-performing VMware vSphere virtual infrastructure. You will learn how to configure and manage ESXi CPU, memory, networking, and storage for sophisticated, enterprise-scale environments. You will also learn how to manage changes to the vSphere environment and optimize the performance of all vSphere components. This book also focuses on high value and often overlooked performance-related topics such as NUMA Aware CPU Scheduler, VMM Scheduler, Core Sharing, the Virtual Memory Reclamation technique, Checksum offloading, VM DirectPath I/O, queuing on storage array, command queuing, vCenter Server design, and virtual machine and application tuning. By the end of this book you will be able to identify, diagnose, and troubleshoot operational faults and critical performance issues in vSphere.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
vSphere High Performance Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Selecting the right VM disk type


When you create a virtual disk, you can specify disk properties, such as size, format, clustering features, and more. However the most important is the format.

The type of virtual disk used by your virtual machine can have an effect on the I/O performance, thus it plays a vital role in maintaining the disk performance. Type of disks which are available today are:

  • Eagerzeroed thick

  • Lazyzeroed thick

  • Thin

You need to carefully evaluate the workload and the performance factors for each disk before you choose one.

Getting ready

To step through this recipe, you will need one or more running ESXi Servers, a vCenter Server, and a working installation of vSphere Client. No other prerequisites are required.

How to do it...

When you create a disk inside a VM, you have the option to select the type of disk as follows:

  1. Open up vSphere Client and log in to the vCenter Server.

  2. Select Hosts and Clusters on the home screen.

  3. Navigate to the ESXi host where you want to create a new VM...