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23 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Identify appropriate BIOS setting requirements for optimal ESXi host performance
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Up-to-date BIOS
Enable hyper-threading. Enable hardware assisted virtualization (Intel VT-x and AMD-V) Enable Rapid Virtualization Indexing (AMD) or Extended Page Tables (Intel) Enable Power Management/Demand-Based Switching (DBS) Enable I/O MMU Virtualization Set the CPU power-saving features to "OS Controlled" |
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Identify appropriate firmware setting requirements for optimal ESXi host performance
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Ensure you are using the most up-to-date firmware for your host.
Consult vendor documentation for information on queue depth, TCP offload/TCP chimney settings Enable "Turbo Boost" if your firmware/BIOS/processor supports it Ensure all populated sockets and cores are enabled. Enable NUMA and disable node interleaving. |
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Tune ESXi host memory configuration
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Performance Best Practices, page 25
Appropriately size VM memory and CPU to avoid memory overhead. Don't disable memory over-commitment techniques such as balooning, page sharing, and memory compression (so, MAKE SURE VMWARE TOOLS IS INSTALLED). Use the swap to host cache feature. |
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Tune ESXi host networking configuration: General
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Performance Best Practices, page 34
Monitor CPU utilization, virtual networking relies heavily on the CPU to process the network queues. For applications sensitive to network latency, you want to disable C1E and other C-states in the BIOS of the host(s) that the application may run on. |
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Tune ESXi host networking configuration: DirectPath I/O
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Performance Best Practices, page 34
DirectPath I/O may improve network performance, but you sacrifice a lot of core functionality like vMotion and FT. |
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Tune ESXi host networking configuration: SplitRX Mode
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Performance Best Practices, page 34
SplitRX mode is a new feature that was introduced with vSphere 5.0 and it can improde performance for virtual machines in certain circumstances. Typically, networking traffic comes into a network queue and is processed by a single physical CPU. SplitRX mode is a per-VM setting that allows network traffic coming into a single network queue to be processed by multiple physical CPUs. -If the VM is a networking appliance that is traversing traffic between virtual machines on the same host using the API, then throughput may be increased with the use of SplitRX. -If you have more than one virtual machine on the same host receiving multicast traffic from the same location, then SplitRX can improve throughput and efficiency. |
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Tune ESXi host networking configuration: vSwitch configuration
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Performance Best Practices, page 34
Use separate vSwitches with different physical adapters to avoid contention between VMkernel and virtual machine traffic. |
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Tune ESXi host networking configuration: VMXNET3
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Performance Best Practices, page 34
The use of VMXNET3 paravirtualized adapters should be used as the standard, not the exception. When using VMXNET3, there is a feature called virtual interrupt coalescing. Disabling this feature can improve performance for certain network latency-sensitive applications. |
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Tune ESXi host networking configuration: Adjust Host Power Management Settings
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Performance Best Practices, page 34
From Inventory -> Hosts and Clusters 1. Click Configuration. 2. Click on Power Management (under Hardware) 3. Click on the Properties link. 4. Select the High Performance option. 5. Click OK. |
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Tune ESXi host CPU configuration: General
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Performance Best Practices, P 19
Turn on DRS Don't configure your VMs for more vCPUs than their workloads require. Configuring a VM with more vCPU than it needs will cause additional, unnecessary CPU utilization due to the increase overhead relating to multiple vCPUs. |
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Tune ESXi host CPU configuration: hyper-threading
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Performance Best Practices, P 19
If your hardware supports hyper-threading, then the hypervisor should automatically take advantage of it. When using hyper-threading ensure that you leave the per-VM advanced CPU setting to Any. Changing this setting to None will essentially disable hyper-threading. |
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Tune ESXi host CPU configuration: NUMA
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Performance Best Practices, P 19
When dealing with NUMA systems, ensure that node interleaving is disabled in the BIOS. If node interleaving is set to enabled it essentially disables NUMA capability on that host. When possible, configure the number of vCPU to equal or less than the number of physical cores on a single NUMA node. -When you configure equal or less vCPU:physical cores, the VM will get all its memory from that single NUMA node, resulting in lower memory access and latency time. |
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Tune ESXi host CPU configuration: Enable/Disable hyper-threading
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Performance Best Practices, P 19
From Inventory -> Hosts and Clusters 1. Select Host 2. Click Configuration tab 3. Click Processors 4. Click Properties 6, Check or un-check Enabled (if properites is greyed out, hyper-threading is not enabled in the BIOS) |
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Tune ESXi host storage configuration: General
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Performance Best Practices, P 30
Ensure that the storage configuration setup has enough IOPS to support the virtual machine workloads running on said storage. |
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Tune ESXi host storage configuration: DRS
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Performance Best Practices, P 30
Enable Storage DRS if licensed for it. Even if you set to manual, enable Storage DRS in order to get the initial placement recommendations. |
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Tune ESXi host storage configuration: Storage I/O Conrol
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Performance Best Practices, P 30
Turn on Storage I/O Control to split up disk shares globally across all hosts accessing that datastore. SIOC will proportionally assign disk shares per-host based on the sum of VM disks shares and total disk shares for that datastore. |
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Tune ESXi host storage configuration: esxtop metrics
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Performance Best Practices, P 30
One of the key metrics you want to monitor in r/exstop are GAVG counters, these are the "guest average" counters and they indicate what the guest VM is seeing. For example, the GAVG/cmd counter will show what latency the guest VM is seeing when accessing that particular storage device. |
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Tune ESXi host storage configuration: multipathing
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Performance Best Practices, P 30
Ensure that your multipathing policies are set in accordance with the best practices from VMware and your storage vendor. Even if the multi-pathing policy you are currently using might be working, it doesn't mean that there isn't a better one out there that is more efficient. |
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Configure and apply advanced ESXi host attributes: GUI
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Resource Management, Pp 104-106
From Inventory -> Hosts and Clusters 1. Select a Host 2. Click on the Configuration tab 3. Under Software, click on the Advanced Settings link. 4. Choose the attribute group in the left-hand pane. 5. In the right-hand pane, locate the proper attribute and make the required change. |
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Configure and apply advanced ESXi host attributes: CLI
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Resource Management, Pp 104-106
esxcli system settings advanced or vicfg-advcfg |
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Configure and apply advanced Virtual Machine attributes: GUI
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Resource Management, Pp 101-104
From Inventory -> Hosts and Clusters 1. Select a VM 2. Click Edit Settings 3. Click Options 4. Click Configuration parameters 5. Click Add Row 6. Enter the name of the attribute and the value 7. Click OK |
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Configure and apply advanced Virtual Machine attributes: CLI
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Resource Management, Pp 101-104
In CLI vmAdvSettings.pl -vmname <VM name> -operation <update> -key <key name> -value <value> In PowerCLI Get-VM <VM Name>| Set-VMAdvancedConfiguration -key <key> -value <value> |
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Configure advanced cluster attributes
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Resource Management, Pp 104-105
From Inventory -> Hosts and Clusters 1, Right-click on the cluster and click Edit Settings. 2. Click on vSphere HA 3. Click the Advanced Options button. 4. From here, add an Option and the Value. 5. Click OK when finished. |
