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.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

What counters not to use


A lot of the time, we assume that some very popular counters would be better to monitor memory performance. However, many times, it leads to something else. This means that these are not an indication of a memory performance issue. If this counter is combined with something else, then it may indicate performance degradation.

In this aspect, don't use two of the most popular counters just to understand whether the memory is under pressure or not:

  • Mem.consumed (Consumed Memory)
  • Mem.vmmemctl (ballooned memory)

Let me show you what they essentially indicate.

The Mem.consumed counter is the amount of memory consumed by one or all VMs. This is calculated as memory granted minus memory saved by sharing. Now the question is why we should not use this. The reason is that memory allocation will vary dynamically based on the VM's entitlement. It is important that a VM should get whatever it actually demands.

Similarly, Mem.vmmemctl is the amount of ballooned memory. This does not...