vSphere Deepdive

Magnus BergmanJoel Lindberg

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Agenda VMware vCloud® Suites Launch Context and Product Set vSphere 5.0 Recap vSphere 5.1 Overview • Compute, Storage, Network—Enhancements and Features

• Availability, Security, Automation—Enhancements and Features

• vCenter Server—Enhancements and Features

• Additional Features and Enhancements— “The Best of the Rest”

Memory, CPU and Network Best Practises

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VMware vCloud Suite

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VMware vSphere 5.0

Application Services

Infrastructure Services

Scalability

VMware vSphere 5

Security

• ESXi Firewall • 32 way SMP• 1 TB VMs

New HA Architecture• vMotion over

higher latency links

Availability

NetworkStorage

• Network I/O Control (per VM controls)

• Distributed Switch (Netflow, SPAN, LLDP)

• Storage DRS• Profile-Driven

Storage• VMFS 5• Storage I/O

Control (NFS)

• ESXi Convergence• Auto Deploy• HW version 8

Compute

vCenter Server • Virtual Appliance• Web ClientvCenter Server

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What’s New in vSphere 5.1?

Automation

VMware vSphere 5.1

Security

• vShield Endpoint

• Storage DRS and Profile-Driven Storage integration with VCD• Enhanced Auto Deploy

• Data Protection• Replication• vMotion w/o shared

storage• 0 Downtime upgrades

of VMware Tools

Availability

NetworkStorage

• Enhanced Distributed Switch

• SR-IOV support

• Storage Appliance• Storage Space

Reclamation for VDI

• HW version 9• 64 way SMP 1 TB VMs

Compute

•Single Sign On (vCD, vShield, vCenter)

•vSphere Web Client

vCenter Server 5.1 •Enhanced vCenter Orchestrator

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Compute, Storage, Network—Enhancements and Features

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vSphere vSpherevSphere

vCenter Server with Auto Deploy

Host ProfilesImage Profiles

Deploy and patch vSphere hosts in minutes using a new “on the fly” model

Coordination with vSphere Host Profiles

2 new operating modes

Overview

Benefits

Fast initial deployment and patching

Centralized host and image management

Reduce manual deployment and patch processes

Continue deployment even when a failure occurs

vSphere

Auto Deploy

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Distributed Switch

Distributed Switch now delivers: Network Healthcheck Configuration Backup and Restore Roll Back and Recovery LACP Support

Visibility into physical and virtual network status

Backup and recover network settings

Fast recovery from lost connectivity or incorrect configurations

Overview

BenefitsvSphere vSpherevSphere

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Create virtual machines with up to: 64 vCPU 1 TB of vRAM

2x size of previous vSphere versions

Run even the largest applications in vSphere, including very large databases

Virtualize even more applications than ever before (Tier 1 and 2)

vSphere Scales to Support Mission-Critical Applications

2x

Overview

Benefits

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Availability, Security, and Automation— Enhancements and Features

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Live migration of a virtual machine without the need for shared storage

Extends VMware’s revolutionary technology for automated virtual machine movement

Zero downtime migration

No dependency on shared storage

Lower operating cost

Helps meet service level and performance SLAs

vMotion (w/o Shared Storage)

Overview

Benefits

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New backup and recovery tool for the vSphere platform

Replaces vSphere Data Recovery

Based on EMC Avamar

Use less disk space with deduplication

Simple setup and management

Proven technology

vSphere Data Protection

Overview

Benefits

VMware vSphere

DATA DEDUPLICATEDAND STORED ON VDP

APPLIANCE

VDP

*All editions and kits with the exception of Essentials

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Virtual machine level replication by the vSphere host

Included with vSphere*

Low cost/efficient replication option

Simple setup from within vCenter Server

Integration with SRM enables automated DR process

vSphere Replication

Overview

Benefits

vSphere

vSphere Replication

Site A (Primary)

vSphere

Site B (Recovery)

*All editions and kits with the exception of Essentials

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Secure your VMs with offloaded anti-virus and anti-malware (AV) solutions without the need of agents

Included with vSphere*

Simplified AV administration

Higher consolidation ratios by preventing the possibility of AV storms

Improved performance

vShield Endpoint

Overview

Benefits

*All editions and kits with the exception of Essentials

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vCenter Server—Enhancements and Features

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Web Client

New, improved interface into vSphere delivers:

Browser-based experience Custom tagging Scalability Enhanced workflow management

Platform independence

Tag based on specific business cases

Manage more objects and 3x more active sessions than ever before

Pause and resume even the most complex workflow or task

Overview

Benefits

Object Navigator

Inventory Objects

Tabs

Create Custom Actions

Sidebar Extension

Portlets

Add right-click extensions

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vSphere Web Client InterfaceObject Navigator

Sidebar ExtensionCreate Custom ActionsInventory Objects

Tabs

Add right-click extensions

Portlets

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Web Client—Native Plug-In Support

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Single Sign-On

Sign-on once rather than multiple times in vCenter Server

Faster operations

Less complexity

Support for multiple identity services

Future building block for other VMware products and solutions

Overview

Benefits

vSpherePlatformServices

CustomerIdentity Sources

vSphere Solutions

Authentication(Single Sign On)

vCO Inventory ServicevCenter

ActiveDirectory

Authorization Auditing

vSphereWeb Client

OpenLDAP NIS

Local OS

Users

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Single Sign-On

vSpherePlatformServices

CustomerIdentity Sources

vSphere Solutions

Authentication(Single Sign On)

vCO Inventory ServicevCenter

ActiveDirectory

Authorization Auditing

vSphereWeb Client

OpenLDAP NIS Local OS

Users

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vCenter Orchestrator (vCO)

Workflow Engine Enhancements:

Web Client Integration (launch workflows)

New workflow design Simplified configuration

and installation

Execute workflows with a single interface

Simplicity thru drag and drop workflow creation

Automatic configuration

Deploy as a virtual appliance

Overview

Benefits

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Additional Features and Enhancements

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The Best of the Rest

Platform • ESXi Platform Updates

• New VM Features and Capabilities

• Host Profiles

Network • Port Mirroring Enhancements

• Scale

OS Support• Windows 8 Server and Desktop

Storage • VMFS File Sharing Limits

• Space Efficient Sparse Virtual Disks

• 5 Node MSCS Cluster

• Storage Protocol Enhancements

• Storage Resource Management Enhancements

• VMware vCloud® Director™ Interoperability

**Details on the new vSphere Storage Appliance 1.5 (which works in conjunction with vSphere 5.1) are available in a separate customer overview

© 2009 VMware Inc. All rights reserved

MEMORY

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Memory – Host Memory Management

Occurs when memory is under contention

Transparent Page Sharing

Ballooning

Compression

Swapping

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Memory – Transparent Page Sharing

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Memory – Ballooning

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Memory – Compression

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Memory – Swapping

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Memory – Swapping

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Memory – Ballooning vs. Swapping

Ballooning is better than swapping

Guest can surrender unused/free pages

Guest chooses what to swap, can avoid swapping “hot” pages

Idle memory tax uses ballooning

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Memory – Rightsizing

Generally, it is better to OVER-commit than UNDER-commit

If the running VMs are consuming too much host/pool memory…• Some VMs may not get physical memory

• Ballooning or host swapping

• Higher disk IO

• All VMs slow down

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Memory – Best Practices

Avoid high active host memory over-commitment• No host swapping occurs when total memory demand is less than the physical

memory (Assuming no limits)

Right-size guest memory• Avoid guest OS swapping

Ensure there is enough vRAM to cover demand peaks

Use a fully automated DRS cluster• Test that vMotion works

• Use Resource Pools with High/Normal/Low shares

• Avoid using custom shares

© 2009 VMware Inc. All rights reserved

CPU

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CPU – Overview

Raw processing power of a given host or VM• Hosts provide CPU resources

• VMs and Resource Pools consume CPU resources

CPU cores/threads need to be shared between VMs

Fair scheduling vCPU time• Hardware interrupts for a VM

• Parallel processing for SMP VMs

• I/O

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CPU – vSMP

Relaxed Co-Scheduling: vCPUs can run out-of-sync

Idle vCPUs incur a scheduling penalty• configure only as many vCPUs as needed

• Impose unnecessary scheduling constraints

Use Uniprocessor VMs for single-threaded applications

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CPU– Scheduling

Over committing physical CPUs

VMkernel CPU Scheduler

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CPU– Scheduling

Over committing physical CPUs

VMkernel CPU Scheduler

X X

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CPU– Scheduling

Over committing physical CPUs

VMkernel CPU Scheduler

X XXX

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CPU – Ready Time

The percentage of time that a vCPU is ready to execute, but waiting for physical CPU time

Does not necessarily indicate a problem• Indicates possible CPU contention or limits

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CPU – NUMA nodes

Non-Uniform Memory Access system architecture

Each node consists of CPU cores and memory

A CPU core in one NUMA node can access memory in another node, but at a small performance cost

NUMA node 1 NUMA node 2

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CPU – NUMA nodes

The VMkernel will try to keep a VM’s vCPUs local to its memory• Internal NUMA migrations can occur to balance load

Manual CPU affinity can affect performance• vCPUs inadvertently spread across NUMA nodes

• Not possible with fully automated DRS

VMs with more vCPUs than cores available in a single NUMA node may see decreased performance

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CPU – Troubleshooting

vCPU to pCPU over allocation• HyperThreading does not double CPU capacity!

Limits or too many reservations• can create artificial limits.

Expecting the same consolidation ratios with different workloads• Virtualizing “easy” systems first, then expanding to heavier systems

• Compare Apples to Apples• Frequency, turbo, cache sizes, cache sharing, core count, instruction set…

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CPU – Best Practices

Right-size vSMP VMs

Keep heavy-hitters separated• Fully automated DRS should do this for you

• Use anti-affinity rules if necessary

Use a fully automated DRS cluster• Test that vMotion works

• Use Resource Pools with High/Normal/Low shares

• Avoid using custom shares

© 2009 VMware Inc. All rights reserved

NETWORK

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Network – Load Balancing

Load balancing defines which uplink is used• Route based on Port ID

• Route based on IP hash

• Route based on MAC hash

• Route based on NIC load

Probability of high-bandwidth VMs being on the same physical NIC

Traffic will stay on elected uplink until an event occurs• NIC link state change, adding/removing NIC from a team, beacon probe

timeout…

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Network – Troubleshooting

Check counters for NICs and VMs• Network load imbalance

• 10 Gbps NICs can incur a significant CPU load when running at 100%

Ensure hardware supports TSO• Use latest drivers and firmware for your NIC on the host

For multi-tier VM applications, use DRS affinity rules to keep VMs on same host• Same vSwitch / VLAN, rules out physical network

If using Jumbo Frames, ensure it is enabled end-to-end

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Network – Best Practices

Use the vmxnet3 virtual adapter• Less CPU overhead

• 10 Gbps connection to vSwitch

Use the latest driver/firmware for the NICs on the host

Use network shares• Requires Virtual Distributed Switch 4.1

Isolate vMotion and iSCSI traffic from regular VM traffic• Separate vSwitches with dedicated NIC(s)

• Most applicable with Gigabit NICs

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Key Takeaways – Performance Best Practices

Understand your environment• Hardware, storage, networking

• VMs & applications

Advanced configuration values do not need to be tweaked or modified• In almost all situations

Use fully automated DRS

Use Paravirtual virtual hardware

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Aggregates thousands of metrics into Workload, Capacity,Health scores

Self-learns “normal” conditions using patented analytics

Smart alerts of impending performance and capacity degradation

Identifies potential performance problems before they start

Slide 50

Tools – vCenter Operations

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Tools – vCenter OperationsSlide 51