vSphere High Performance Cookbook

Book description

A cookbook is the ideal way to learn a tool as complex as vSphere. Through experiencing the real-world recipes in this tutorial you’ll gain deep insight into vSphere’s unique attributes and reach a high level of proficiency.

  • Troubleshoot real-world vSphere performance issues and identify their root causes
  • Design and configure CPU, memory, networking, and storage for better and more reliable performance
  • Comprehensive coverage of performance issues and solutions including vCenter Server design and virtual machine and application tuning

In Detail

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

  1. vSphere High Performance Cookbook
    1. Table of Contents
    2. vSphere High Performance Cookbook
    3. Credits
    4. About the Author
    5. About the Reviewers
    6. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more
        1. Why Subscribe?
        2. Free Access for Packt account holders
        3. Instant Updates on New Packt Books
    7. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Errata
        2. Piracy
        3. Questions
    8. 1. CPU Performance Design
      1. Introduction
      2. Critical performance consideration – VMM scheduler
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      3. CPU scheduler – processor topology/cache aware
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      4. Ready time – warning sign
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      5. Hyperthreaded core sharing
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      6. Spotting CPU overcommitment
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      7. Fighting guest CPU saturation in SMP VMs
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      8. Controlling CPU resources using resource settings
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      9. What is most important to monitor in CPU performance
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      10. CPU performance best practices
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
    9. 2. Memory Performance Design
      1. Introduction
      2. Virtual memory reclamation techniques
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
          1. Transparent page sharing
          2. Memory ballooning
      3. Monitoring host-swapping activity
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      4. Monitoring host-ballooning activity
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      5. Keeping memory free for VMkernel
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      6. Key memory performance metrics to monitor
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      7. What metrics not to use
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      8. Identifying when memory is the problem
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      9. Analyzing host and VM memory
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      10. Memory performance best practices
        1. How to do it…
    10. 3. Networking Performance Design
      1. Introduction
      2. Designing a network for load balancing and failover for vSphere Standard Switch
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
          1. Route based on the originating virtual switch port ID (default)
          2. Route based on source MAC hash
          3. Route based on IP hash
          4. Link status only
          5. Beacon probing
      3. Designing a network for load balancing and failover for vSphere Distributed Switch
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      4. What to know when offloading checksum
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      5. Selecting the correct virtual network adapter
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      6. Improving performance through VMDirectPath I/O
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      7. Improving performance through NetQueue
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      8. Improving network performance using the SplitRx mode for multicast traffic
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      9. Designing a multi-NIC vMotion
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      10. Improving network performance using network I/O control
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      11. Monitoring network capacity and performance matrix
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
    11. 4. DRS, SDRS, and Resource Control Design
      1. Introduction
      2. Using DRS algorithm guidelines
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      3. Using resource pool guidelines
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
      4. Avoiding using resource pool as folder structure
        1. How to do it...
        2. How it works...
      5. Choosing the best SIOC latency threshold
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      6. Using storage capability and profile driven storage
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      7. Anti-affinity rules in the SDRS cluster
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      8. Avoiding the use of SDRS I/O Metric and array-based automatic tiering together
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      9. Using VMware SIOC and array-based automatic tiering together
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
    12. 5. vSphere Cluster Design
      1. Introduction
      2. Trade-off factors while designing scale up and scale out clusters
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      3. Using VM Monitoring
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      4. vSphere Fault Tolerance design and its impact
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      5. DPM and its impact
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      6. Choosing the reserved cluster failover capacity
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. See also
      7. Rightly choosing the vSphere HA cluster size
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
    13. 6. Storage Performance Design
      1. Introduction
      2. Designing the host for a highly available and high-performing storage
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      3. Designing a highly available and high-performance iSCSI SAN
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
          1. Jumbo frames
          2. Pause frames
          3. TCP delayed Ack
      4. Designing a highly available and high-performing FC storage
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
          1. RAIDlevel data protection
      5. Performance impact of queuing on the storage array and host
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      6. Factors that affect storage performance
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      7. Using VAAI to boost storage performance
        1. Atomic test & set (ATS)
        2. Clone blocks/full copy/XCOPY
        3. Zero blocks/write same
        4. Getting ready
        5. How to do it...
        6. How it works...
      8. Selecting the right VM disk type
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      9. Monitoring command queuing
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
      10. Identifying a severely overloaded storage
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
    14. 7. Designing vCenter and vCenter Database for Best Performance
      1. Introduction
      2. vCenter Single Sign-On and its database preparation
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      3. vCenter Single Sign-On and its deployment
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      4. Things to bear in mind while designing the vCenter platform
        1. How to do it...
      5. Designing vCenter Server for redundancy
        1. How to do it…
      6. Designing a highly available vCenter database
        1. How to do it...
      7. vCenter database size and location affects performance
        1. How to do it...
      8. Considering vCenter Server Certificates to minimize security threats
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. See also
      9. Designing vCenter Server for Auto Deploy
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
    15. 8. Virtual Machine and Application Performance Design
      1. Introduction
      2. Setting the right time in Guest OS
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. See Also
      3. vNUMA (Virtual NUMA) considerations
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      4. Choosing the SCSI controller for storage
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      5. Impact of VM swap file placement
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      6. Using large pages in virtual machines
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      7. Guest OS networking considerations
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. See Also
      8. When you should or should not virtualize an application
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
      9. Measuring the application's performance
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
    16. Index

Product information

  • Title: vSphere High Performance Cookbook
  • Author(s): Prasenjit Sarkar
  • Release date: July 2013
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781782170006