VMware VROOM released/updated a nice Performance Troubleshoot guide for vSphere 4.1
The hugely popular Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4 guide is now updated for vSphere 4.1 . This document provides step-by-step approach for troubleshooting most common performance problems in vSphere-based virtual environments. The steps discussed in the document use performance data and charts readily available in the vSphere Client and esxtop to aid the troubleshooting flows. Each performance troubleshooting flow has two parts:
- How to identify the problem using specific performance counters.
- Possible causes of the problem and solutions to solve it.
New sections that were added to the document include troubleshooting performance problems in resource pools on standalone hosts and DRS clusters, additional troubleshooting steps for environments experiencing memory pressure (hosts with compressed and swapped memory), high CPU ready time in hosts that are not CPU saturated, environments sharing resources such as storage and network, and environments using snapshots.
This document by no means covers the entire breadth of performance-related problems. We request the readers of this document, including VMware performance community members and vSphere administrators, to help us enhance this document by letting us know about all the performance problems they encounter in their vSphere-based virtual environments, including those that require elaborate troubleshooting steps. We hope that the community will actively contribute by engaging in live discussions, providing feedback, and asking questions. All this input will serve as the topics for future updates
Download (PDF, 754.95KB)
Virtual Hardware (VMX) template configuration:
| Hardware: |
Value: |
| Memory |
2 GB |
| CPU’s |
1 |
| Video card |
Auto-detect video settings |
| VMCI device |
None |
| SCSI Controller 0 |
LSI Logic SAS, bus sharing: none |
| Hard disk 1 |
40 GB, Thin (after deploy always Thick) |
| CD/DVD Drive 1 |
Client Device |
| Floppy Drive 1 |
Removed |
| Network Adapter 1 |
VMXNET3, network: VM Network with DHCP (for joining domain) |
| General Options |
OS: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit) |
| VMware Tools |
Advanced: Check and upgrade Tools during power cycling |
| Virtual Machine Version |
7 |
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 template configuration:
- Install always the latest VMware Tools (in my case: ESXi 4.1 build 260247)
- Change the CD/DVD Drive 1 from drive letter D:\ to X:\
- Install VMware display driver: VMware SVGA 3D (Microsoft Corporation – WDDM)
Driver located: C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\wddm_video\
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Last week I bought a brand new OCZ Agility Series 60 GB SSD for my workstation as OS disk. I started a fresh Windows 7 64-bit installation and made some software tweaks for optimal performance. Down here some of those little settings to maximize your performance.
I already upgraded the firmware to the latest level v.1.5
My computer specs: click here
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You can monitor/check your ESX performance with esxtop, by generating a share to your vCenter Server and view the results with Perfmon you can follow this article.
Create Credentials:
1. I created a new share on my vCenter 2003 on E:\Logging\
2. I created a new user with username: Logging and password: Logging
3. On the new created folder I add the Logging account with full permissions to the security rights:
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vSphere 4.0 introduces a new para-virtualized network device – VMXNET3. We recently published a paper demonstrating its performance characteristics, compared to that of enhanced VMXNET2 (the previous generation of high performance virtual network device from VMware).
Some highlights of this paper are:
(1) Throughput gains of up to 92% for 10G TCP/IPv4 Rx workloads with large socket buffer, which greatly improves bulk data transfer performance in a data center environment.
(2) Dramatic gains across all configurations of IPv6 traffic, with significant CPU usage reduction and throughput improvement over enhanced VMXNET2.
In a nutshell, VMXNET3 offers performance on par with or better than its predecessors on both Windows and Linux guests. Both the driver and the device have been highly tuned to perform better on modern systems. Furthermore, VMXNET3 introduces new features and enhancements, such as TSO6 and RSS. TSO6 makes it especially useful for users deploying applications that deal with IPv6 traffic, while RSS is helpful for deployments requiring high scalability. Moving forward, to keep pace with an ever-increasing demand for network bandwidth, we recommend customers migrate to VMXNET3.
For more details, please read our full paper from here.
Performance problems can arise in any computing environment. In a virtualized computing environment performance problems can arise due to new and often subtle interactions occurring in the shared infrastructure. Uncovering the causes of those problems requires an understanding of the available performance metrics and their relationship to underlying configuration issues.
A new guide covering performance troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4, including ESX 4.0 hosts, is now available. This document uses a guided approach to lead the reader through the observable manifestations of complex hardware/software interactions in order to identify specific performance problems. For each problem covered, it includes a discussion of the possible root-causes and solutions. Topics covered include performance problems arising from issues in the CPU, memory, storage, and network subsystems, as well as in the VM and ESX host configuration.
The document is available on the VMware Performance Community.
Er zijn nogal wat problemen omtrent Windows Terminal Servers/Citrix op VMware ESX servers. Wat zijn nou de beste instellingen om performance te waarborgen.
Om dit allemaal uit te zoeken ben ik bezig geweest bij een klant die performance problemen ervaren. Deze klant heeft meerdere ESX hosts, een host heb ik gepakt om bezig te gaan met de performance problemen. De host en VM’s hebben de volgende specificaties:
ESX Host Configuratie:
Model: HP ProLiant DL380 G5
Processors: 8 CPU x 1,999 Ghz
Processor Type: Intel® Xeon® CPU E5335 @ 2.00 Ghz
Number of NICs: 6
OS: VMware ESX 3.5 u4
vSwitch Configuratie:
vSwitch 1:
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Wij constateren performance issues op de WAN interface maar de oorzaak is niet duidelijk. Men klaagt over traag internet maar toch blijft het moeilijk om het e.e.a. uit te lezen waar en wie nou die bandbreedte weg trekt.
De applicatie Fireplotter kan d.m.v. SSH of Telnet een connectie opzetten naar je Cisco PIX/ASA
Na enige periode te hebben gelogged krijg je een beeld met wie / wat performance wegneemt van je bandbreedte.
Indien je meer wilt weten over een bepaald protocol waar je veer verkeer over ziet lopen kan je op het protocol dubbelkikken, vervolgens krijg je te zien welke commincatie naar [destination] gaat:
In folder C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\FirePlotter\ staan logbestanden aangemaakt door Fireplotter. Denk aan connectie logs en firewall configuratie.
Meer informatie: http://www.fireplotter.info/content/view/44/51
Download trial: FirePlotter Version 1.41
Training video: FirePlotter Training Video – 3 minutes
