User guide

Technical white paper | HP Enterprise Virtual Array Storage and VMware vSphere 4.x and 5.x configuration best practices

Figure 22 shows a better-balanced environment, achieved by moving the controller ownerships of Vdisk 5 and 6 to

Controller 1 and of Vdisk1 and 2 to Controller 2.

Figure 22. Balanced I/O access in a vSphere 4.x environment after changing controller ownership for certain Vdisks

This type of tuning can be useful in most environments, helping you achieve the optimal configuration.

Monitoring EVA host port throughput

In order to achieve the balance described above, you must be able to monitor EVA host port throughput. HP recommends

using EVAperf, a utility that is bundled with Command View EVA management software and can be accessed from the

desktop of the Command View EVA management station.

For more information on using EVAperf to monitor host port throughput, refer to Appendix C: Balancing I/O throughput

between controllers.

Best practice for monitoring EVA host port throughput

• To allow you to make proactive adjustments, use EVAperf to monitor EVA performance.

Optimizing I/O size

You can enhance the performance of applications that generate large I/Os by reducing the maximum I/O size that vSphere

hosts can send to the EVA array.

By design, vSphere 4.x allows I/Os as large as 32 MB to be sent to the array. You can control I/O size via the vSphere

advanced parameter Disk.DiskMaxIOSize. HP recommends setting this value to 128 KB for an EVA array to optimize overall

I/O performance.

Note

VMware makes a similar recommendation in their knowledge base article 1003469.

Best practice for improving the performance of VMs that generate large I/Os

• Consider setting the vSphere advanced parameter Disk.DiskMaxIOSize to 128 KB to enhance storage performance.