Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

VMware vCenter Server provides a centralized way to control and monitor the virtual infrastructure. It has been widely deployed in a remote offices and branch offices (ROBO) environment to manage ESXi hosts that are distributed over large geographical distances over a wide range of networks with different network characteristics, including low/high bandwidth, network latency, and packet error rates.

In this paper, VMware performs a comprehensive study of vCenter Server performance with a ROBO use case for the VMware vCenter 6.7 release.

They demonstrate that vCenter Server performs well in the ROBO environment for both network bandwidth use, as well as virtual machine and ESXi host task execution times. Instead of a bandwidth restriction, they observed that network latency has a bigger impact on the overall performance.

As the network latency between vCenter Server and ESXi hosts increases, the average operation latency also increases. The experimental results also show how efficiently vCenter Server executes VM operations in high-latency networks: The average VM operation execution time increases much more slowly when network latency increases by several times.

The vCenter Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) enables customers to easily create event-driven automation based on vCenter Server Events. For example, VEBA can drive basic workflows like automatically attaching a vSphere tag when a virtual machine (VM) is created.

Even more powerful integrations between datacenter-internal enterprise services and cloud services, for example, Slack and Pager Duty, can be created with VEBA out of the box.

The Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer (VMCO) is a Powershell script that uses the PowerCLI module to capture information about the hosts and VMS running in your vSphere environment, and reports back on whether the VMs are configured optimally based on the Host CPU and memory.

It will flag a VM as “YES” if it is optimized and “NO” if it is not. For non-optimized VMs, a recommendation is made that will keep the same number of vCPUs currently configured, with the optimal number of virtual cores and sockets.

Version 2.0.0

• The priority of the findings are captured
• Details on the findings are included
• Cluster information is captured to determine if Host HW is not consistent across the cluster
• Report if a VM spanning pNUMA nodes actually has the pNUMA exposed to the guest OS
• Report if advanced settings have been changed on the VM or host level to expose pNUMA to the guest OS
• Reports if the number of vCPUs for a VM exceeds the physical cores of the host (using hyperthreads as vCPUs)
• Ability to use the stand-alone “Get-OptimalvCPU” function for more flexibility

Scripting and PowerCLI are words that most people working with VMware products know pretty well and have used once or twice. Everyone knows that scripting and automation are great assets to have in your toolbox.

The problem usually is that getting into scripting appears daunting to many people who feel like the learning curve is just too steep, and they usually don't know where to start.

The good thing is you don't need to learn everything straight away to start working with PowerShell and PowerCLI. Once you have the basics down and have your curiosity tickled, you’ll learn what you need as you go, a lot faster than you thought you would!

This eBook doesn't contain everything, but it contains what you need to know to get started. Just like a mechanic’s starter kit, you can't build a car engine with it, but you can do the basics to call yourself a mechanic.

This eBook contains the first few steps of a long stairway paved with cmdlets, properties, and methods and few more treats along the way. We’ll start by covering the basics, then we’ll break the examples into sections about completing specific tasks so you can get an idea of where certain commands will be used.

Written by VMware vExpert Xavier Avrillier, this free eBook presents a use-case approach to learning how to automate tasks in vSphere environments using PowerCLI. We start by covering the basics of installation, set up, and an overview of PowerCLI terms. From there we move into scripting logic and script building with step-by-step instructions of truly useful custom scripts, including:

• How to retrieve data on vSphere objects
• Display VM performance metrics
• How to build HTML reports and schedule them
• Basics on building functions
• And more!

Stop looking at scripts online in envy because you wish you could build your own scripts. Download this eBook now and get started on your path to automation greatness!