Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

whitepaper

vSphere CPU Scheduler whitepaper, this is it!!

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This is the whitepaper I’ve been waiting for. By now we all know that the CPU Scheduler has changed. The only problem is that there wasn’t any official documentation about what changed and where we would benefit. Well this has changed. VMware just published a new whitepaper titled “The CPU Scheduler in VMware® ESX™ 4“.

The CPU scheduler in VMware ESX 4 is crucial to providing good performance in a consolidated environment. Since most modern processors are equipped with multiple cores per processor, systems with tens of cores running hundreds of virtual machines are common. In such a large system, allocating CPU resource efficiently and fairly is critical. In ESX 4, there are significant changes to the ESX CPU scheduler that improve performance and scalability. This paper describes these changes and their impact. This paper also provides details of the CPU scheduling algorithms in the ESX server.

I can elaborate all I want but I need you guys to read the whitepaper to understand why vSphere is performing a lot better than VI 3.5. (I will give you a hint: “cell”.)

Another whitepaper that’s definitely worth reading is “Virtual Machine Monitor Execution Modes: in VMware vSphere 4.0“.

The monitor is a thin layer that provides virtual x86 hardware to the overlying operating system. This paper contains VMware vSphere 4.0 default monitor modes chosen for many popular guests running modern x86 CPUs. While most workloads perform well under these default settings, a user may derive performance benefits by overriding the defaults. The paper examines situations where manual monitor mode configuration may be practical and provides two ways of changing the default monitor mode of the virtual machine in vSphere.

And while you arealready taking the time off to educate yourself you might also want to read the “FT Architecture and Performance” whitepaper. Definitely worth reading!

New whitepapers

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VMware recently posted two new Whitepapers, which are most definitely worth reading:

VMware VMFS Volume Management
Technical explanation as to how VMFS Volume Manager handles disks that are presented to the ESX server. This informational note covers use settings to mount or resignature volumes that appear as duplicates to the original volumes created by VMFS.

SQL Server and VMware Virtual Infrastructure
Microsoft SQL Server is a very popular and widely deployed general purpose database server supported on Windows Sever operating systems. As customers embrace a “virtualize first” policy for all applications within their enterprises, they often need guidelines for deploying SQL Server in VMware Infrastructure. This paper should help you understand how to characterize your SQL Server databases for virtualization and the best practices for designing VMware Infrastructure to support SQL Server.

High Availability “Deepdive” page

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I’ve just created a new Page. This page will also deal about VMware HA. I threw all my “deepdive” posts into one page which makes it easier to find for you guys and search engines. But most important, easier to maintain. When I’ve got more technical in-depth information I will add it to the page.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

VMReference Card 1.3

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Forbes just released version 1.3 of his VMReference Card.This card can be very useful for those studying for VCP/VCDX. But it might also come in handy when doing troubleshooting on the Service Console:

I’ve just finished updating my reference card.  The biggest change is that I’ve moved everything to the latest update of 3.5 as the default.

  • Updated the details to the latest Confuguration Maximiums PDF.
  • Updated it to include 3.5 update 3 release notes.
  • Changed the versioning to include the latest VMware release, so its more obvious how up to date (or not) your card is.
  • Some minor additions (NAS maximums) and corrections.

Many thanks to all the readers who have written in with comments.  Always welcome.

Go and grab it here: http://www.vmreference.com/vi3-card

Go to VMReference.com and download the Card. Leave a comment while you are there!

VMware Technical papers

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VMware lately published a whole bunch of must read technical papers:

Storage Design Options for VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Companies planning to deploy VDI face decisions about the use of both local and shared storage,
and in the case of shared storage solutions, choosing between differing technologies available in
today’s market. Selecting the appropriate storage model is important for both performance and costs reasons. Certain solutions require less overhead than others, as do different implementations of the same technology. Costs can vary greatly depending on which storage options are chosen. Fortunately organizations can leverage a myriad of best practices to help drive these costs down, while improving performance. This paper provides information on technical concepts related to storage implementations in a VMware ® Virtual Desktop Infrastructure ( VDI) environment.

VMware View Reference Architecture Kit

This reference architecture kit is comprised of four distinct papers written by VMware and our supporting partners to serve as a guide to assist in the early phases of planning, design and deployment of VMware View based solutions. The building block approach uses common components to minimize support costs and deployment risks during the planning of VMware View based deployments.

SQL Server Workload Consolidation

Database workloads are very diverse. While most database servers are lightly loaded, larger database workloads can be resource-intensive, exhibiting high I/O rates or consuming large amounts of memory. With improvements in virtualization technology and hardware, even servers running large database workloads run well in virtual machines. Servers running Microsoft’s SQL Server, among the top database server platforms in the industry today, are no exception.

Using IP Multi Cast with VMware

IP multicast is a popular protocol implemented in many applications for simultaneously and efficiently delivering information to multiple destinations. Multicast sources send single copies of information over the network and let the network take responsibility for replicating and forwarding the information to multiple recipients.