vSphere 4 Best Practices/ Common Support Issues

1. vSphere 4Best Practices/Common Support Issues Paul Hill Research Engineer, System Management VMware

2. Agenda • Deployment • Installation • vCenter • High Availability • Distributed Resource Scheduler • Fault Tolerance • Common Support Issues • Troubleshooting

3. Common Support Issues – Deployment • Understand the technology and integration of the components • Preparation > Planning > Testing • servers, network, storage, disaster recovery, backup, hw monitoring • Adhere to the HCL for the version of products to be used • Vendor product engagement • Development systems quickly become production • Categorize VMs, and storage based on OS type and applications. • Capacity planner for existing datacenter migration • Licensing: make sure you have enough, and the correct product licenses required for the deployment • Deploy a number of template VMs running IOmeter & Loadingmate as a virtualization burn-in

4. Common Support Issues – Installation Physical server firmware/bios check – server burn-in Disconnect/un-zone external storage Monitoring/review systems & logs post installation and configuration Partition for business environment Patching - VUM (VMware Update Manager) Name resolution Use Gigabit NICs Install VUM on a server other than vCenter For major revision ESX upgrades, best to use iso|zip Remote console access issues due to ports blocked

5. Common Support Issues – vCenter VC Database sizing Estimate of the space required to store your performance statistics in the DB Separate Critical Files onto Separate Drives Make sure the database and transaction log files are placed on separate physical drives Place the tempdb database on a separate physical drive if possible Arrangement distributes the I/O to the DB and dramatically improves its performance If a third drive is not feasible, place the tempdb files on the transaction log drive Enable Automatic Statistics Keep vCenter logging level low, unless troubleshooting Proper scheduling of DB backups, maintenance, monitoring Do not run vCenter on a server that has many applications running vCenter Heartbeat - http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server-heartbeat/ Guided Consolidation for conversions

6. Common Support Issues – High Availability (HA) HA network configuration check – DNS, NTP, lowercase hostnames, HA advanced settings Redundancy: server hardware, shared storage, network, management Test network isolation from a core switch level, and host failure for expected outage behavior Critical VMs should NOT be grouped together Categorize VM criticality, then set the failover appropriately Valid VM network label names required for proper failover Failover capacity/Admission control may be too conservative when host and VM sizes vary widely – slot size calculator in VC

7. Common Support Issues – DRS • Higher number of hosts => more DRS balancing options • Recommend up to 32 hosts/cluster, may vary with VC server configuration and VM/host ratio • Network configuration on all hosts - VMotion network: Security policies, VMotion NIC enabled, Gig • Reservations, Limits, and Shares • Shares take effect during resource contention • Low limits can lead to wasted resources • High VM reservations may limit DRS balancing • Overhead memory • Use resource pools for better manageability, do not nest too deep • Virtual CPU’s and Memory size • High memory size and virtual CPU’s => fewer migration opportunities • Configure VMs based on need network, etc.

8. Common Support Issues – DRS Ensure hosts are CPU compatible Intel vs. AMD Similar CPU family/features Consistent server bios levels, and NX bit exposure Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) “VMware VMotion and CPU Compatibility” whitepaper CPU incompatibility => limited DRS VM migration options Larger Host CPU and memory size preferred for VM placement (if all equal) Differences in cache or memory architecture => inconsistency in performance Aggressiveness threshold - Moderate threshold (default) works well for most cases Aggressive thresholds recommended if homogenous clusters and VM demand relatively constant and few affinity/anti-affinity rules Use affinity/anti-affinity rules only when needed Affinity rules: closely interacting VMs Anti-affinity rules: I/O intensive workloads, availability Automatic DRS mode recommended (cluster-wide) Manual/Partially automatic mode for location-critical VMs (per VM) Per VM setting overrides cluster-wide setting

9. Fault Tolerance • Provides complete redundancy • By definition, FT doubles resource requirements • Turning on FT disables performance-enhancing features like, H/W MMU • Each time it is enabled, it causes a live migration • Use a dedicated NIC for FT traffic • Place primaries on different hosts • Asynchronous traffic patterns • Host Failure considerations • Run FT on machines with similar characteristics

10. Common Support Issues – ESX/ESXi • Snapshots are not a backup tool • Running a VM on a snapshot may cause performance issues, and could fill up the data stores • VM-support logs, archive point in time • ESXi - profile capture – syslog export – VIMA - mix with classic • Set the COS to 800 MB • v/4 COS: custom build of RHEL5 up3, limit non-standard RPMS • Hardware health monitoring • AMD Servers- NUMA memory balance • Size guest memory appropriately to avoid guest OS swapping

11. Common Support Issues – Troubleshooting Log collection at the time of the problems, and prior to support request- website initiated. Limit configuration changes Call right away, always better to ask first than wait Stay current, be proactive, not reactive, could be too late Keep VMware tools up to date KB, documentation, technical papers

12. Questions • ?’s