VMware vSphere 4 Technical Information

Performance Best Practices for VMwarevSphere® 4.0VMware® ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0vCenter Server 4.0EN-000005-03

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.010 VMware, Inc.

VMware, Inc. 11 1This chapter provides guidance on selecting and configuring hardware for use with VMware vSphere.Validate Your Hardware Test system

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.012 VMware, Inc. Hardware-assisted MMU virtualization allows an additional level of page tables that

VMware, Inc. 13Chapter 1 Hardware for Use with VMware vSphere Hardware Storage ConsiderationsBack-end storage configuration can greatly affect perfor

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.014 VMware, Inc. Hardware Networking Considerations Before undertaking any network optimization effo

VMware, Inc. 15Chapter 1 Hardware for Use with VMware vSphere Hardware BIOS SettingsThe default hardware BIOS settings on servers might not always be

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.016 VMware, Inc.

VMware, Inc. 17 2This chapter provides guidance regarding ESX software itself and the virtual machines that run in it.ESX General ConsiderationsThis

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.018 VMware, Inc.  ESX 4.0 introduces virtual hardware version 7. By creating virtual machines using

VMware, Inc. 19Chapter 2 ESX and Virtual Machines ESX CPU ConsiderationsThis subsection provides guidance regarding CPU considerations in ESX.CPU vir

VMware, Inc.3401 Hillview Ave.Palo Alto, CA 94304www.vmware.com2 VMware, Inc.Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere® 4.0 You can find the most

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.020 VMware, Inc.  Although some recent operating systems (including Windows Vista, Windows Server 20

VMware, Inc. 21Chapter 2 ESX and Virtual Machines For nearly all workloads, custom hyper-threading settings are not necessary. In cases of unusual wo

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.022 VMware, Inc. Hardware-assisted MMU is supported for both AMD and Intel processors beginning with

VMware, Inc. 23Chapter 2 ESX and Virtual Machines ESX Memory ConsiderationsThis subsection provides guidance regarding memory considerations in ESX.

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.024 VMware, Inc.  While ESX allows significant memory overcommitment, usually with little or no impa

VMware, Inc. 25Chapter 2 ESX and Virtual Machines Large Memory Pages for Hypervisor and Guest Operating SystemIn addition to the usual 4KB memory pag

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.026 VMware, Inc. ESX Storage ConsiderationsThis subsection provides guidance regarding storage consid

VMware, Inc. 27Chapter 2 ESX and Virtual Machines  Before performing an alignment, carefully evaluate the performance impact of the unaligned VMFS p

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.028 VMware, Inc. ESX Networking ConsiderationsThis subsection provides guidance regarding networking

VMware, Inc. 29 3This chapter provides guidance regarding the guest operating systems running in virtual machines.Guest Operating System General Cons

VMware, Inc. 3 ContentsAbout This Book 71 Hardware for Use with VMware vSphere 11Validate Your Hardware 11Hardware CPU Considerations 11Hardware-Assis

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.030 VMware, Inc. ESX VMI support can be enabled for a virtual machine through the vSphere Client by s

VMware, Inc. 31Chapter 3 Guest Operating Systems Guest Operating System CPU Considerations In SMP guests the guest operating system can migrate proc

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.032 VMware, Inc. Guest Operating System Storage Considerations The default storage adapter in ESX 4.

VMware, Inc. 33Chapter 3 Guest Operating Systems Guest Operating System Networking ConsiderationsThe default virtual network adapter emulated inside

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.034 VMware, Inc. For VMXNET, the default number of receive and transmit buffers is 100 each, with the

VMware, Inc. 35 4This chapter provides guidance regarding resource management best practices. Most of the suggestions included in this section can be

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.036 VMware, Inc. VMware vCenter Best PracticesThis section lists VMware vCenter practices and configu

VMware, Inc. 37Chapter 4 Virtual Infrastructure Management VMware VMotion and Storage VMotion ESX 4.0 introduces virtual hardware version 7. Because

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.038 VMware, Inc. VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) Best PracticesClustering configurations

VMware, Inc. 39Chapter 4 Virtual Infrastructure Management 300 </pollPeriodSec> </drm></config>The default frequenc

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.04 VMware, Inc. Glossary 43Index 51

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.040 VMware, Inc. VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM) Best PracticesDistributed Power Management

VMware, Inc. 41Chapter 4 Virtual Infrastructure Management VMware Fault Tolerance Best PracticesVMware Fault Tolerance (FT) provides continuous virtu

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.042 VMware, Inc.  Make sure that power management scheme settings (both in the BIOS and in ESX) that

VMware, Inc. 43 A AMD Virtualization (AMD-V)AMD’s version of virtualization assist, included in some 64-bit AMD processors. See also Virtualization A

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.044 VMware, Inc. EPT (Extended Page Tables)Intel’s implementation of hardware virtual MMU.F Fault Tol

VMware, Inc. 45Glossary iSCSIA protocol allowing SCSI commands to be transmitted over TCP/IP (typically using ordinary Ethernet cabling). An iSCSI cl

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.046 VMware, Inc. NICHistorically meant “network interface card.” With the recent availability of mult

VMware, Inc. 47Glossary R RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks)A technology using multiple hard disks to improve performance, capacity, or reli

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.048 VMware, Inc. ThrashingA situation that occurs when virtual or physical memory is not large enough

VMware, Inc. 49Glossary vlanceOne of the virtual network adapters available in a virtual machine running in ESX. The vlance adapter emulates an AMD P

VMware, Inc. 5 TablesTable 1. Conventions Used in This Manual 8Table 2-1. Symptoms of Insufficient Resources for the ESX Service Console 17

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.050 VMware, Inc.

VMware, Inc. 51 IndexNumerics10 Gigabit Ethernetand NetQueue 1464-bit DMA addresses 14Aactive/active storage arrayspolicy 27active/passive storage ar

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.052 VMware, Inc. file system partitionsalignment 26Floppy drives 17FT (Fault Tolerance) 41HHA (High A

VMware, Inc. 53Index Ppage sharing 23paravirtual timer 30paravirtualization 29PCIbus architecture 14PCI Expressbus architecture 14PCIebus architectur

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.054 VMware, Inc. VMotionand network adapters 38compatible hosts and DPM 40CPU compatibility 38VMware

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.06 VMware, Inc.

VMware, Inc. 7 This book, Performance Best Practices for VMware® vSphere 4.0, provides a list of performance tips that cover the most performance-cri

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.08 VMware, Inc. ConventionsTable 1 illustrates the typographic conventions used in this manual.Techni

VMware, Inc. 9About This Book Issue PublicationIdle loop KB article 1730CPU utilization KB article 2032Network throughput between virtual machinesKB