Setting up your vSphere environment became easier over the last couple of year but a lot has changed from vSphere 4.0 to vSphere 6.0. In this article I will provide vSphere performance tips and tricks, which will be applicable to vSphere 5.5 and vSphere 6.0.
- To get the best performance out of your vSphere Web-Client, use Google Chrome.
- Have vCenter hosted on a SSD or some low latency storage to have a pleasant experience.
- Ensure that Hyper-Threading is enabled, vSphere fully understands and uses it.
- Disable any power-saving features in the BIOS of your servers. Power-saving modes might cut the available compute resources.
- Use VMXNET3 driver on all your VMs. VMXNET3 is the only network driver which gets actively maintained by VMware.
- If you’re running 1GB vmnics, you might saturate the link and create a bottleneck. Monitor the average throughput on your vmnics and consider upgrading to 10GB.
- Be aware that there is no performance advantage of using RDMs, VMDKs or iSCSI direct-attached drives. Avoid RDM if possible. It is an administrative nightmare.
- When using iSCSI, make sure to configure port-binding properly.
- If you run jumbo frames, test the configuration. You would be surprised how many people mis-configure jumbo frames from end to end.
- For performance troubleshooting, look at ESXTOP. Here is a good article about it.
- Follow VMwares performance blog for up to date tips and tricks.
- Enable DRS & SDRS to utilize your cluster resources efficiently.
Note: If you feel I’m missing some important tips & tricks, please comment on this port or engage me on twitter and I’ll add your suggestions.
