Eric Sloof

The ability to run extremely large virtual machines on vSphere 6.5 aligns closely with the needs of large databases in the enterprise today. Specifically, Oracle database instances in some cases require large amounts of RAM, many processors, and high-speed flash-based storage to achieve the performance needed.


Tests were run in the VMware lab using monster virtual machines running Oracle databases to study their performance. Tests were run across a range of server generations and a flash storage array to illustrate how much performance has increased with each new generation of processor, the performance benefit of HyperThreading, and NUMA effects.

The results of these tests show that the performance of Oracle databases on large virtual machines is excellent.

vCenter Cluster Performance Tool is a Powershell script that uses vSphere PowerCLI to obtain performance data for a cluster by aggregating information from individual hosts. You have the following options to specify in the script.

An “interval” of 20s or 300s. The default is 20s, and corresponds to real time statistics. 300s corresponds to the 5 min interval statistics.
A stats query flag to obtain the list of counter IDs available on the vCenter Server. You can then pass the desired counter ID from that list to obtain Performance metrics for the cluster.

• Gathers all data of the specified interval type that is available on each host in the specified cluster
• Easy and a quick way of obtaining performance data for a vCenter cluster
• Data is saved in a CSV file, which can then easily be fed into any charting software
• A chart, in PNG format, is also generated for visualization

vSAN is a hypervisor-converged, software-defined storage solution for the software-defined data center. It is the first policy-driven storage product designed for VMware vSphere environments that simplifies and streamlines storage provisioning and management.

vSAN is a distributed, shared storage solution that enables the rapid provisioning of storage within VMware vCenter Server as part of virtual machine creation and deployment operations.

vSAN requires a correctly configured network for virtual machine I/O as well as communication among cluster nodes. Since the majority of virtual machine I/O travels the network due to the distributed storage architecture, highly performing and available network configuration is critical to a successful vSAN deployment.


This paper gives a technology overview of vSAN network requirements and provides vSAN network design and configuration best practices for deploying a highly available and scalable vSAN solution.

This course highlights the new features and enhancements in vSphere 6.5. It also presents use cases that describe how the new features align with customer needs.

This course begins by discussing VMware vCenter and VMware vSphere administration. To simplify what’s new in vSphere 6.5, we can break the advancements down into three primary categories under vSphere and vCenter server administration. 

• First, we have dramatically simplified the administrator’s experience which makes IT more efficient than ever before. 
• Second, we have added comprehensive built-in security into vSphere 6.5 to secure your entire data center. 
• And the third is that it provides a universal application platform giving you the ability to run any application, anywhere.

At the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Explain the important functional and architectural changes in vSphere 6.5
• Identify high-level capabilities that arise from the functional changes
• Identify new use cases that are now feasible with vSphere 6.5
• Outline the new features in related software-defined data center products that are now enabled with vSphere 6.5 enhancements

This paper discusses the use of Microsoft Office 365 in a VMware Horizon 7 environment, including tips and best practices that can improve performance and application manageability.

It's intended for IT administrators who want to expand their use of VMware Horizon 7. Familiarity with VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server is assumed, as is familiarity with other technologies, including networking and storage in a virtual environment, Active Directory, identity management, and directory services.

The Cluster Rules Manager (CRM) can be operationally challenging to maintain vSphere DRS rules. Cluster Rules Manager (CRM) is a web application which enables users to easily manage & report DRS rules.

• Auditing anti-affinity across VMs in a vCenter Server.
• Importing DRS affinity rules from multiple vCenter servers.
• Exporting DRS affinity rules to new vCenter from the vCenter for which DRS rules are already imported.
• Real time complete DRS rule report containing various metrics. User has flexibility to generate this report on entire vCenter or datacenter (s) or cluster(s) level. This report cannot be generated on ESXi host and VM level. This report can be downloaded.
• Real time VM-Rule association report. Here, the VM will be the focal point and the report will give all the associated rules with that VM. The rule status User has flexibility to generate this report on all the levels, entire vCenter or datacenter (s) or cluster(s) or host (s) or VM(s) level. This report can be downloaded.
• Ability to connect other vCenter from UI.

Download the Cluster Rules Manager

This video demonstrates how to enable vCenter Server High Availability using the Advanced workflow on the vCenter Server Appliance 6.5. 

Enabling vCenter High Availability - Basic

The VMware Migration Assistant facilitates the migration of the Windows vCenter server configuration, performance statistics and database to the vCenter Server Appliance 6.5. In this walkthrough, you can see the two-stage process that is involved when switching and upgrading from a Windows based 5.5 installation to the appliance. Click the following link to get access to the walkthrough. https://ntpro.sharedemos.com​

In this demo, Tim Sandy shows you how to deployed the new vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.5. He also shows you how to get started after you download the ISO file and all the way through successfully having the VCSA 6.5 deployed and running.

Be sure to watch the next enablement video (Technical 301 - VCSA 6 5 - Part 2 (Configuration, Backup, & Restore). In this session, he shows you configuring the appliance itself, then performing a backup and restore using the new Backup/Restore function directly from the appliance.

DEMO: VCSA 6.5 - Part 2 (Configuration, Backup, & Restore)

DEMO: VCSA 6.5 - Part 3 (vCenter Configuration)

The API commands in the vCenter Server Appliance let you perform various administrative tasks in the vCenter Server Appliance. The API commands are provided by appliance management service in the vCenter Server Appliance. You can edit time synchronization settings, monitor processes and services, set up the SNMP settings, and so on.