Technical information

VMware, Inc. 3
Contents
About This Book 7
1 Hardware for Use with VMware vSphere 11
Validate Your Hardware 11
Hardware CPU Considerations 11
Hardware-Assisted Virtualization 11
Hardware-Assisted CPU Virtualization (Intel VT-x and AMD AMD-V) 11
Hardware-Assisted MMU Virtualization (Intel EPT and AMD RVI) 11
Hardware Storage Considerations 13
Hardware Networking Considerations 14
Hardware BIOS Settings 15
2 ESX and Virtual Machines 17
ESX General Considerations 17
ESX CPU Considerations 19
Hyper-Threading 20
Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) 21
Configuring ESX for Hardware-Assisted Virtualization 21
ESX Memory Considerations 23
Memory Overhead 23
Memory Sizing 23
Memory Overcommit Techniques 23
Memory Swapping 24
Large Memory Pages for Hypervisor and Guest Operating System 25
Hardware-Assisted MMU Virtualization 25
ESX Storage Considerations 26
ESX Networking Considerations 28
3 Guest Operating Systems 29
Guest Operating System General Considerations 29
Running Paravirtualized Operating Systems 29
Measuring Performance in Virtual Machines 30
Guest Operating System CPU Considerations 31
Guest Operating System Storage Considerations 32
Guest Operating System Networking Considerations 33
4 Virtual Infrastructure Management 35
General Resource Management Best Practices 35
VMware vCenter Best Practices 36
VMware vCenter Database Considerations 36
VMware VMotion and Storage VMotion 37
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) Best Practices 38
VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM) Best Practices 40
VMware Fault Tolerance Best Practices 41