7. Performance in vSphere

VMware has invested considerable resources in the area of performance with the release of vSphere. In fact, the company claims that vSphere has seen the largest performance increase of any of its releases to date, a statement which VMware has backed up with an impressive array of published benchmark results. Performance monitoring and diagnosis is usually an area of confusion and misinterpretation among many administrators, and although getting your vSphere environment up and running out of the box is a straightforward process, fine-tuning and ensuring that your vSphere environment is running optimally is more complex. Even if you are familiar with the basics of vSphere administration, it is well worth it to take the time to familiarize yourself with the subject of performance in vSphere, particularly troubleshooting performance issues.

Understanding the processes of monitoring, alerting, and troubleshooting performance issues in vSphere is key to being a successful vSphere administrator. This chapter will discuss the new performance-related improvements and features in vSphere and will provide some basic recommendations regarding how to use vSphere’s tools and utilities to monitor and troubleshoot performance-related issues. There are many levels of complexity to vSphere performance which could easily warrant a book unto itself; the purpose of this chapter is to provide you with a basic foundation from which you can build and expand your vSphere performance knowledge further.