Tag Archives: ROI

Virtual Machine Performance – CPU Ready

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I have had feedback that navigation of my blog to find past posts is difficult, so I am aiming to solve this by creating new sections which will hopefully help with navigation.

This section is dedicated to posts I have written relating to CPU ready.

I am still seeing environments on a regular basis where virtual machines are not being sized appropriated during initial deployment and tools such as vCenter Operations (even where it has been deployed) not being used to optimize performance of virtual machines and vSphere cluster/s.

I have customers buying new hardware, where it is simply not required. The goal of this section is to make sure people get the best return on investment (ROI) out of their hardware and VMware licensing.

CPU Ready

1. VM Right Sizing – An Example of the benefits

2. How Much CPU Ready is OK?

3. Common Mistake – Using CPU Reservations to solve CPU Ready

4. High CPU Ready with Low CPU Utilization

5. More Coming soon

Related Articles

1. Determining if multiple vCPUs are causing performance problem (VMware KB)

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Example Architectural Decision – Advanced Power Management for vSphere Clusters with Business Critical Applications

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Problem Statement

In a vSphere environment where Business Critical Applications have been successfully virtualized, should Advanced Power Management be used to help reduce data center costs?

Requirements

1. Fully Supported solution

2. Reduce data center costs where possible

3. Business Critical Application performance must not be significantly degraded

Assumptions

1. Supported Hardware

2. vSphere 5.0 or later

3. Admission Control is enabled with >= N+1 redundancy

Constraints

1. None

Motivation

1. Reduce Datacenter costs where possible with minimal/no impact to performance

Architectural Decision

Configure the BIOS to “OS Controlled”

Set ESXi Advanced Power Management to “Balanced”

Justification

1. Power savings can be realized with almost no impact to performance

2. The performance difference between “High performance” & “Balanced” options is insignificant however Power savings can be achieved reducing cost and environmental impacts

3. In the unlikely event of performance issues as a result of using the “Balanced” option, the BIOS is set to OS Controlled so ESXi can be updated without downtime during troubleshooting

4. Advanced Power Management Options (other than “High Performance” & “Balanced”) have proven to have excellent power savings but at a high cost to performance which is not suitable for Business Critical Applications

5. As HA Admission Control is used to provide >=N+1 redundancy, the ESXi hosts will generally not be fully utilized which will give Advanced Power Management opportunities to conserve power

6. The workloads in the cluster/s run 24/7 however demand is generally higher during business hours and some low demand or idle time exists

7. Even where only a small power saving is realized, if performance is not significantly impacted then a faster ROI can be achieved due to cost savings

Implications

1. Where performance issues exist using “Balanced” a vSphere administrator may need to change Advanced Power Management to “High Performance”

Alternatives

1. Use “High Performance”

2. Use “BIOS Controlled”

3. Do not use Advanced Power Management

4. Use Advanced Power Management in conjunction with DPM

Relates Articles

1. Power Management and Performance in ESXi 5.1 – By Rebecca Grider (@RebeccaGrider)

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Example Architectural Decision – Site Recovery Manager Deployment Location

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Problem Statement

To ensure Production vSphere environment/s can meet/exceed the required RTOs in the event of a declared site failure and easily perform scheduled DR testing, VMware Site Recovery Manager will be used to automated the failover to the secondary site.

What is the most suitable way to deploy Site Recovery Manager to ensure the environment can be maintained with minimal risk/complexity?

Requirements

1. Meet/Exceed RTO requirements
2. Ensure solution is fully supported

Assumptions

1. vCenter is considered a Tier 1 application
2. vSphere 5.1
3. SRM 5.1
4. A single Windows instance hosts vCenter, SSO and Inventory services and is protected by vCenter Heartbeat

Constraints

1. SRM is not protected by vCenter Heartbeat

Motivation

1. Reduce the complexity for BAU maintenance

Architectural Decision

Install Site Recovery Manager on a dedicated Windows 2008 instance

Justification

1. When installing / upgrading /  patching  SRM including Storage Replication Adapters (SRAs) this may require a reboot or troubleshooting which may impact the production vCenter, including SSO and inventory services.

2. Having SRM separate to vCenter ensures the fail over is not unnecessarily delayed in the event of a disaster due to contention with vCenter on the same VM

3. SRM and vCenter work together in the event of an outage, as such they are less complimentary workloads

4. If hosted on vCenter, SRM will then be subject to the same change windows and be impacted during any maintenance performed for applications running on the same OS instance

5. The SRM application has different availability requirements than vCenter, as such if SRM was combined with vCenter, SRM (having a lower availability requirement than vCenter) would have to be treated with the same change management / care as vCenter which would complicate BAU maintenance

6. The SRM service (business) has different maintenance requirements to vCenter, as such they are not suited to be placed on the same VM

7. Having SRM on a dedicated VM aligns with the scaling out recommendation for virtual workloads

8. Having additional components on the same OS increases complexity and may reduce the availability of vCenter

Alternatives

1. Place SRM on the vCenter server

Implications

1. One (1) additional Windows 2008 R2 licenses will be required

2. One (1) additional Windows instance will need to be maintained in BAU

I would like to Thank James Wirth VCDX#83 (@jimmywally81) for his contribution to this example architectural decision.

Related Articles

1. VMware Site Recovery Manager, Physical or Virtual machine?

2. Swap file location for SRM protected VMs

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