Eric Sloof

Yes! I’m beyond excited to share that I’ve been awarded the vExpert Award 2025 for the 17th consecutive year! 🏆 It’s just as thrilling as the first time, and I’m incredibly grateful to be recognized for my contributions to the community.

I also want to extend a huge congratulations to all my fellow vExperts who have earned this recognition! It’s truly inspiring to see the passion, knowledge, and dedication within our community. Together, we continue to learn, innovate, and support each other.

A massive thank you to everyone who makes the vCommunity so special—whether you’re a mentor, speaker, blogger, or simply someone who loves to share knowledge. I’m proud to be part of this incredible network, and I look forward to another year of collaboration and innovation!

Here’s to pushing the boundaries and making an impact! 🚀

With the growing demand for scalable and high-performance messaging solutions, VMware Tanzu RabbitMQ 1.3 and Confluent Kafka have emerged as key players in event streaming and message queue technologies. A recent performance study on VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) highlights key improvements in Tanzu RabbitMQ and provides insights into Apache Kafka’s deployment on Kubernetes. Below, we summarize the key takeaways.

Key Technologies Evaluated

The study focused on the following technologies running on VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid:

• Tanzu RabbitMQ 1.3 – An enterprise-grade message broker with improvements in Quorum Queues and streaming capabilities.

• Confluent Kafka – A widely used distributed event streaming platform with support for large-scale real-time data processing.

• Strimzi – A Kubernetes operator for deploying Kafka clusters with ease.

Performance Highlights

Tanzu RabbitMQ 1.3: Significant Throughput Gains

• 30% higher throughput compared to previous versions, especially in Quorum Queue scenarios.

• Increased efficiency in handling messages of different sizes:

• Small messages (~55,634 messages/sec)

• Large messages (~15,334 messages/sec)

• RabbitMQ Streams reached up to 2.47 million messages/sec in a multi-stream setup.

Apache Kafka: High Throughput with Tuning

• Kafka was tested using 3 brokers, 12 partitions, and different replication settings.

• Achieved peak throughput of 149MB/sec with single-producer configurations.

• Replication overhead was noticeable, but asynchronous replication provided a balance between performance and durability.

• End-to-end message latency was 3ms for 1KB messages.

Architecture & Deployment Insights

• Both solutions were deployed on a 4-node VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster.

• Hardware Setup:

• 24 vCPUs per node

• 72GB RAM per node

• 2TB storage per node

• Kafka’s Strimzi Operator was leveraged for automation and scaling.

• Tanzu RabbitMQ’s warm standby replication ensured high availability and disaster recovery.

Conclusion: Which One to Choose?

• Tanzu RabbitMQ 1.3 is ideal for low-latency message delivery, flexible routing, and high availability.

• Apache Kafka is better suited for event-driven architectures and large-scale real-time data streaming.

For businesses leveraging VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, both technologies offer powerful messaging and event streaming capabilities, each with distinct advantages depending on the workload.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, low-latency computing is critical for applications in financial services, media streaming, and real-time automation. VMware vSphere 8 introduces a suite of performance enhancements designed to optimize virtualized environments for latency-sensitive workloads. This guide summarizes key takeaways from Broadcom’s latest whitepaper on performance tuning for vSphere 8.

Understanding Latency Optimization in vSphere 8

VMware vSphere 8 provides a powerful platform for virtualized workloads, balancing high performance with efficient resource utilization. However, for latency-sensitive applications, additional tuning is required to minimize response times. The key tradeoff here is increased CPU utilization in exchange for reduced latency.

Baseline Recommendations

To maximize performance for low-latency applications, it’s essential to ensure your environment is running the latest hardware and software:

• Processor generations: Use the latest supported CPUs.
• BIOS and microcode: Ensure firmware is up to date.
• vSphere version: At least vSphere 8.0 U3 or 7.0 U3.
• Virtual Hardware Version: Use Virtual Hardware 21 or newer.
• VM Tools: Version 12.4.5 or newer.

Additionally, minimize the use of vSphere overlays like NSX and vSAN, as these services consume CPU cycles and may increase latency.

Host-Level Optimizations

Optimizing ESXi host configurations is crucial for reducing latency:

• BIOS Settings: Set power management to "High Performance," disable C-states and P-states, and enable Turbo Boost.
• Disable EVC: Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) can mask CPU instructions and increase latency.
• vMotion and DRS Scheduling: Avoid live migrations during peak performance periods, as they can momentarily disrupt workloads.
• Advanced Settings:
  • Disable action affinity
  • Enable SplitRX and SplitTX for improved network processing
  • Disable queue pairing to prevent network bottlenecks

Virtual Machine-Level Optimizations

Configuring VMs correctly can significantly impact latency:

• Rightsizing: Ensure VMs are not oversized beyond NUMA node limits.
• Disable Hot-Add: This prevents NUMA topology from being exposed, reducing performance.
• Set High Latency Sensitivity:
  • Reserve CPU and memory exclusively for latency-sensitive VMs.
  • Configure VMXNET3 network adapters for optimal performance.
• NUMA Awareness: Assign VMs to NUMA nodes manually to align with the underlying hardware.
• Use SR-IOV or DirectPath I/O: These features allow direct hardware access for ultra-low latency networking.

Networking Enhancements

For network-intensive workloads, consider:

• VMXNET3: This paravirtualized NIC offers optimized performance.
• Enhanced Datapath Mode: For NFV workloads requiring high throughput.
• SmartNICs and DPUs: Offload network processing to dedicated hardware.
• Queue Balancing: Adjust NIC ring buffer sizes and enable multiple network queues.

Guest OS and Application Tuning

Within the guest operating system, use:

• Photon OS Real-Time Kernel: Optimized for low-latency applications.
• NUMA-aware applications: Configure workloads to take advantage of NUMA topology.
• Thread Affinity: Assign VM workloads to specific CPU cores to prevent contention.

Operational Best Practices

• Use esxtop and net-stats to monitor performance.
• Adjust ring buffers and queue sizes using esxcli.
• Test all changes in a non-production environment before deployment.

Conclusion

By following these best practices, VMware vSphere 8 can be fine-tuned to deliver low-latency performance for critical workloads. Whether optimizing host settings, configuring VMs, or leveraging SmartNICs, these strategies help ensure a responsive and efficient virtualized infrastructure.

For a more in-depth guide, refer to Broadcom’s whitepaper on performance tuning in vSphere 8.

In today’s ever-changing business landscape, disasters such as natural calamities and cyberattacks can disrupt operations without warning. VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (DR) offers a powerful solution for ensuring business continuity by seamlessly recovering workloads in a cloud-based environment. This field guide provides insights into best practices for configuring and managing networking for disaster recovery (DR) using VMware Cloud on AWS.

Introduction to VMware Cloud DR

The VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery solution is designed to protect critical business applications from outages. This involves replicating workloads from a Protected Site to a Recovery Site hosted in VMware Cloud on AWS. The solution addresses various disaster scenarios, including complete site failures and targeted ransomware attacks. Effective network configuration is crucial to ensure that DR operations run smoothly, both during routine protection and emergency recovery.

Key Networking Considerations

1. Basic Networking Topology

The Protected Site (e.g., on-premises or another cloud) connects to the Recovery Site through VMware’s DRaaS Connector. This connection facilitates data replication to the Scale-out Cloud File System (SCFS), where recovery snapshots are stored. Components such as vCenter, vSphere hosts, and virtual machines rely on a robust network configuration to ensure connectivity.

2. Networking Setup for VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Cloud DR leverages Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDCs) in AWS to manage cloud-based resources. Organizations can establish secure connectivity using one of the following methods:

• Public Internet Access with SDDC firewall rules (simpler but less secure)
• VPN Connection for encrypted data transfer
• AWS Direct Connect for a dedicated, high-performance connection

Review these options with your network team to determine the best fit for your environment.

3. Segmenting Networks for Disaster Recovery

Each network segment at the Protected Site requires a corresponding segment at the Recovery Site. This allows for seamless failover of virtual machines without disrupting production workloads. Additional segments can be created specifically for testing DR plans without impacting operational services.

Managing Connectivity and Security

Outbound and Inbound Access

To enable secure communication, network administrators configure gateway firewalls using NSX capabilities. Outbound access allows VMs at the Recovery Site to connect to the internet, while inbound access is managed through published VPNs or public IPs for critical workloads.

Inter-Site Connectivity

During partial failovers, applications may require communication between Protected and Recovery sites. VMware recommends using layer 2 VPNs or Direct Connect to facilitate secure inter-site application connectivity.

Ransomware Recovery Isolation

VMware Cloud DR includes features to isolate compromised networks in a Ransomware Recovery Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE). Using NSX Distributed Firewall rules, organizations can ensure that affected VMs remain isolated during recovery operations, preventing further spread of malware.

Testing and IP Remapping

Non-Disruptive Testing

VMware Cloud DR allows for comprehensive testing of recovery plans by using isolated network segments. This ensures that network configurations and failover procedures can be validated without affecting live applications.

IP Address Mapping

For scenarios where static IPs need to change during failover, VMware Cloud DR provides IP remapping capabilities. Administrators can define IP address rules in the recovery plan to ensure consistency across sites.

Conclusion

VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery is a robust solution for safeguarding business operations in the face of unexpected disruptions. Properly configuring and testing the networking components—ranging from connectivity and firewall rules to network segmentation and isolation—is critical to the success of any DR strategy. VMware offers extensive resources to guide organizations through setup and optimization, ensuring maximum uptime and data protection.

NFS is a reliable and viable storage option for virtualization. VMware supports both NFS version 3 and NFS version 4.1, providing features similar to those available with block-based storage like SAN. With proper configuration, vSphere on NFS delivers strong performance, stability, and a rich feature set.

Key Considerations for Deployment

   1. Networking Configuration

Efficient networking is essential for NFS performance. VMware recommends isolating storage traffic using dedicated switches or VLANs. The minimum NIC speed should be 1GbE, with 10GbE preferred for better throughput. Avoid network congestion by ensuring the LAN connection to the storage array is not over-subscribed.

   2. Throughput and Latency Optimization

NFS throughput can be enhanced using several methods:

• Jumbo Frames: Increases frame payload size for higher efficiency but requires consistent support across all devices.
• Load Sharing: Configure multiple datastores using separate IP connections to distribute network traffic.
• Link Aggregation: Multiple physical interfaces can be combined to provide redundancy and improved performance.

To reduce latency, minimize the number of network hops between ESXi hosts and storage arrays.

Security Best Practices

Security is crucial when deploying NFS:

• NFS v3 relies on root access and lacks encryption, making it essential to isolate NFS traffic on trusted networks.
• NFS v4.1 introduces support for Kerberos authentication and encryption, providing improved security with non-root access and data integrity checks.

High Availability

To ensure high availability:

• Use NIC teaming and redundant physical switches to eliminate single points of failure.
• Implement Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) for improved failover and path redundancy.

Advanced Features

VMware integrates NFS with key vSphere features such as:

• Storage I/O Control (SIOC): Prevents resource contention by dynamically adjusting I/O priorities based on latency.
• Network I/O Control (NIOC): Prioritizes critical network traffic to prevent bottlenecks on shared NICs.
• Storage DRS: Balances workloads across datastores, optimizing both capacity and I/O performance.
• VAAI-NAS: Offloads storage operations to the array, improving efficiency for tasks like cloning and provisioning.

Additional Attributes of NFS Storage

NFS provides several storage advantages:

• Thin Provisioning: Efficiently allocates storage by using only the space that VMs actually consume.
• Deduplication: Some NAS arrays support deduplication, which can significantly reduce storage requirements.
• Backup and Restore: NFS offers granular backup and restore options, including the ability to restore individual files or entire datastores from snapshots.

Sizing and Configuration Tips

• There is no strict performance limitation on NFS volume size, but most datastores are typically in the tens of terabytes range.
• The recommended number of VMs per NFS datastore depends on workload intensity and backup/recovery SLAs.
• Advanced parameters such as TCP heap size, heartbeat intervals, and locking mechanisms can be tuned based on vendor recommendations.

Conclusion

NFS has evolved to become a robust storage solution for VMware vSphere environments. By following these best practices, organizations can maximize the performance, security, and availability of their virtual infrastructure. Collaboration with storage vendors ensures optimal configurations tailored to each deployment.

This guide offers a practical overview of how to leverage NFS storage effectively with VMware vSphere, ensuring reliable and high-performing virtualization.