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Confidential

Performance Tuning for Windows Guest OS

IT Pro CampPresented by:

Matthew Mitchell

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Agenda Introduction

Understanding VMware Performance

Best Practices of HA and DRS with Windows Guests

Virtual Machine Build out

Windows Guest OS Tuning (DEMO)

Monitoring with vCenter Operations Manager (DEMO)

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Introduction

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Understanding VMware Performance

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Maximum Scalability and Performance with VMware vSphere® 5

Application’s Performance Requirements

% o

f App

licat

ions

95% of Apps Require

IOPS

Network

Memory

CPU

< 10,000

<2.4Mb/s

< 4GB at peak

1 to 2 CPUs

VMware vSphere 4

300,000

30Gb/s

256GB per VM

8 vCPUs

VMware Infrastructure

100,000

9Gb/s

16/64GB per VM

4 vCPUs

VMwarevSphere 5.5

1,000,000

>36Gb/s

1,000GB per VM

64 vCPUs

ESX 2

7,000

.9Gb/s

3.6GB per VM

2 vCPUs

ESX 1

<5,000

<.5Gb/s

2GB per VM

1 vCPUs

3.0/3.5

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Oracle DB Example

CPU

VM

32 vCPU

Oracle DB

2–4 CPU

4% utilized

Memory

VM

1TB

Oracle DB

4–8GB

50% utilized

Disk IO

VM

1,000,000 IOPS

Oracle DB

1200 IOPS

Network IO

VM

36Gb/s

Oracle DB

2 MB/S

Source: VMware Capacity Planner™ analysis of > 700,000 servers in customer production environments

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Best Practices

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Best Practices

Use jumbo frames if possible• Using default settings all vMotions succeeded, however some database

failover was observed. By enabling jumbo frames on vmkernel ports vMotions completed with no database failover using default cluster settings, if jumbo frames are not possible consider adjusting the cluster heartbeat interval.

Increase Cluster Heartbeat Interval• Windows Failover Clustering default heartbeat interval is 1000 ms, consider

increasing to 2000 ms to avoid cluster failover due to application stun during vMotion

Dedicated vMotion Interface• Avoid traversing multiple networking devices and sharing bandwidth with

management traffic by dedicating an interface for use by vMotion traffic, place other interfaces as stand-by to provide redundancy

Use DRS Rules• Create VM to Host “should run on” rules to keep virtual machines on preferred

hosts, but allow to run on non-preferred hosts if required

• Create anti-affinity rules to keep clustered virtual machines on separate hosts

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Troubleshooting Steps

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Virtual Machine Build

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VMware ESX/ESXi Architecture

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Virtual Machine Monitoring

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Virtual Machine Build

vCPU

• CPU Sockets vs. CPU Cores

• Lower overhead with more vSockets than vCores per Socket

• Only use vCores when Windows Licensing does not allow for multi-Socket

Memory

• Start small base memory needs on the OS and Application

• If SSD LUN is available create Virtual Disk for the Windows Swap file there.

Video

• For VDI or Terminal Services you can use the custom settings or if Hardware version 9 you can enable 3D support

• If 3D Support is enabled without Graphic Accelerators Present you will increase ESXi CPU load

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Virtual Machine Build

SCSI Controllers

• There are 4 types of SCSI controllers:

• BusLogic Parallel –This is used mostly for Physical to Virtual Migrations.. If you have this controller it is best to install the latest vmware tools then change to the LSI Logic SAS controller. Also this is the default for Windows 2000 Server

• LSI Logic Parallel – This is the standard boot controller for Windows 2003, Vista, and Linux VMs

• LSI Logic SAS – This is the Default for Windows 2012, Windows 2008, and Windows 7

• VMware Paravirtual – High Performance, High I/O (2000 IOPs and greater) with Lower CPU cost. This is your Tier 1 Controller for Tier 1 Apps running on Win2K3, Win2K8 and 2012 as well as RHEL 5.

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Virtual Machine Build

Network Adapters

• Flexible NIC – This NIC is a P2V Migrated virtual machine configuration. Will cause high CPU overhead.

• E1000 NIC – This is the NIC for older Operating Systems and increases the CPU Load on a Host

• E1000E NIC – This is the Default NIC for Most Windows Based systems for Win2K8, Windows 7, and Windows 2012. Also increase CPU load on the Host

• VMXNET 3 – This is you High Performance NIC there is CPU offload to the Physical NICs as well.. Only issue is the Operating System will not recognize this NIC until Vmware Tools are Loaded.

Floppy Drives

• These are created by default if you do not have a need for these remove for better performance of the virtual machine

USB Controller

• Only install or enable if required for 3rd party applications that have a Dongle Key.. Otherwise leave out

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Virtual Machine Build

Virtual Machine Options

• Memory/CPU Hotplug – Windows 2008 and Windows 2012 operating Systems allow for this Feature

SwapFile Location

• This is normally set to Default which stores the Swap File with the virtual machine.. This makes for a Faster vMotion ability.. If SATA LUNs are presented it is recommended that Swap Files are located there and Monitored closely..

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Non Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) Best Practices

Server Node Size Number of Nodes

4 Socket / 4 Core with 64 GB RAM

4 vCPUs with 8 GB RAM

4

2 Socket / 6 Core with 64 GB RAM

6 vCPUs with 32 GB RAM

2

4 Socket / 2 Core with 128 GB RAM

2 vCPUs with 64 GB RAM

4