vSphere 4

VMware Vroom!

If you haven’t subscribed to this RSS Feed, you should do so now… it includes Performance Tips for ESX and vSphere. Here is the link and read the insert below.

“We made a huge number of performance improvements in vSphere 4.0. The ESX storage stack was no exception. We ran a wide variety of micro and real world benchmarks to thoroughly evaluate and optimize vSphere’s storage subsystem. It is now even more efficient for the enterprise and ready to support the cloud.

A wide variety of I/O intensive applications will run efficiently on vSphere with all the improvements.  You can find details on the architectural changes and storage performance improvements made in this white paper.”

I suggest you add the feed to your BlackBerries(Viigo) or iPhone immediately, yes now… not later, now.

NS

Veeam Monitor 4.5 + Veeam Business View

… Are now  is now available!

For the first time ever, you can see the impact of virtual infrastructure performance on individual business units…and take immediate action! Veeam’s newest release now allows you to bridge the gap between IT and business:

- Group, view, and manage virtual machines based on business criteria such as business unit, location, application (e.g. all Exchange servers), service level agreement (SLA), owner, etc.

- Create flexible alerts based on server or application type (e.g all Exchange servers) and business impact (e.g. all high SLA VMs)

- Identify the business impact of the virtual infrastructure’s performance

- Fight VM sprawl

- Discover how easy it is to see your business in a brand new way with Veeam Monitor 4.5 plus Veeam Business View.

Go Here to download Veeam Monitor and Veeam Business View

DRS, Vmotion, and Snapshots

I think setting DRS(Distributed Resource Scheduling) to manual mode when removing snapshots, should be best practice, especially when you are only running two ESX servers and they are slightly taxed. Why? Mainly because when you remove a snapshot, especially a two tiered one, it can cause the hard disk to “thrash” and thus signaling DRS to Vmotion a Virtual Machine from one ESX Server to the other ESX Server automatically. This will of course cause more stress on the hardware and eventually the client may notice the decrease in performance. Hey I’m just speaking from personal experience. When the snapshot is removed, re-enable DRS. Comments?

-NS

vSphere 4 and Windows Server 2008

Here is another quick one for you all…  When creating a Windows Server 2008 Virtual Machine, do not enable paravirtualization, I know you want to, but whilst using vSphere, you will not be able to install the PCI Memory Controller Interface(you will be prompted to find drivers for this device, if you enable paravirtualization in the virtual machine settings). Its is only supported by certain Operating systems… now if you are using Hyper-V enabling paravirtualization will work. Just an FYI.

NS