vSphere

While I was prepping my upcoming “vSphere Advanced Troubleshooting” presentation for the Dutch VMUG event 2010, I stumbled upon a great presentation by Mark Monce. It’s called “Transitioning to ESXi with vSphere 4.1” and contains a lot of information like:

• Overview of ESXi
  
• Hardware Monitoring and Systems Management
  
• Infrastructure Services
  
• Command Line Interfaces
  
• Diagnostics and Troubleshooting

One thing I didn’t know was, that you can use your web browser to retrieve some essential ESXi diagnostic information.

Browser-based Access of Config Files
https://<hostname>/host
Browser-based Access of Log Files
https://<hostname>/host/messages
Browser-based Access of DatastoreFiles
https://<hostname>/folder

Receive packets might be dropped at the virtual switch if the virtual machine’s network driver runs out of receive (Rx) buffers, that is, a buffer overflow. The dropped packets may be reduced by increasing the Rx buffers for the virtual network driver.

In ESX 4.1, you can configure the following parameters from the Device Manager (a Control Panel dialog box) in Windows guest operating systems: Rx Ring #1 Size, Rx Ring #2 Size, Tx Ring Size, Small Rx Buffers, and Large Rx Buffers.


The default value of the size of the first Rx ring, Rx Ring #1 Size, is 512. You can modify the number of Rx buffers separately using the Small Rx Buffers parameter. The default value is 1024.
For some processes (for example, traffic that arrives in burst), you might need to increase the size of the ring, while for others (for example, applications that are slow in processing receive traffic) you might increase the number of the receive buffers.

When jumbo frames are enabled, you might use a second ring, Rx Ring #2 Size. The default value of RX Ring #2 Size is 32. The number of large buffers that are used in both RX Ring #1 and #2 Sizes when jumbo frames are enabled is controlled by Large Rx Buffers. The default value of Large Rx Buffers is 768.

Source KB Article: 1010071

This document describes the technical aspects of NetApp support and integration with VMware® vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), as well as how to deploy and use this technology. VAAI is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) and SCSI commands that offload certain I/O-intensive tasks to NetApp® storage systems. By integrating with vStorage APIs, NetApp enables advanced storage capabilities to be accessed and executed from familiar VMware interfaces, improving manageability, performance, data mobility, and data protection.

http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3886.pdf

VMware has released another great “technical paper” regarding Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.1. It can be found in the Technical Resource Center which by the way contains a lot of awesome docs.

The technical paper, Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.1, provides performance tips that cover the most performance-critical areas of VMware vSphere 4.1. It is not intended as a comprehensive guide for planning and configuring your deployments.

Chapter 1 - “Hardware for Use with VMware vSphere,” provides guidance on selecting hardware for use with vSphere.

Chapter 2 - “ESX and Virtual Machines,” provides guidance regarding VMware ESX™ software and the virtual machines that run in it.

Chapter 3 - “Guest Operating Systems,” provides guidance regarding the guest operating systems running in vSphere virtual machines.

Chapter 4 - “Virtual Infrastructure Management,” provides guidance regarding resource management best practices.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere4.1.pdf