Who is Chris Wahl? • VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) #104 ▫ Data Center and Network Virtualization

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VirtualSprawl (vûr′cho ̅o ̅-əl sprôl) n. A virtual environment with insufficient consumption control and poor lifecycle management

Questionable Reclaiming

Methods

The “Wild West” You can’t have it both ways Rapid provisioning requires rapid reclamation

Projects no longer own hardware.

They lease a logical slice of resources

Monster VM sprawl • Fancy term for a big VM • Software and hardware advancements • Additional considerations

Common misunderstandings • Beware of “always” ▫ Adding CPUs makes a VM faster ▫ Adding Memory makes a VM faster

• Abuse of virtual resources

Identifying performance issues Find out who is ruining the party

Overallocation • “Too much of a good thing” ▫ Right-sizing and waste-finding exercises ▫ vCPU is a common culprit ▫ 4 vCores : 1 pCores is a common goal

Squeeze the juice!

Common warning signs • High %RUN and %IDLE variations • Find %RDY or %CSTP • > 4 vCPUs per pCore

Common warning signs • Host Swap Rate > 0 • Ballooning Driver Frequently Activates

Sub-Optimal Hardware Allocation Larger VMs have needs

Sub-Optimal Hardware Allocation • Sprawl across hardware ▫ Common with older hardware

• NUMA ▫ Check NHN & N&L ▫ Is vNUMA enabled? ▫ > 8 vCPUs? ▫ vProc & vCore match pProc and pCore?

The Michigan Left

NUMA in a nutshell

• Yellow = NUMA Nodes • Pink = NUMA Home Node • Blue = NUMA Locality %

Optimal Hardware Allocation

Sub-Optimal Hardware Allocation

NUMA Node 0 NUMA Node 1

Poor Locality

Competition for resources Those annoying noisy neighbors

DRS is OK, but … • It’s not a silver bullet • Tends to worry over CPU and RAM ▫ … while being ignorant of the larger picture

• A few critical metrics from the field ▫ Licensing configuration ▫ %RDY and %CSTP ▫ Bus device utilization (HBAs, NICs) ▫ Logical placement

3rd Party Tools • Focused more on the tenants as services ▫ Building licenses stacks (SQL, Oracle, etc.) ▫ End-to-end data path ▫ Advanced features

• A few examples ▫ VMTurbo, Cirba, Proactive DRS (fling)

Taking charge! Education is key

You should be the trusted advisor • It’s not the vendors or partners ▫ You’re the one left on the hook, later

• Perform data collection ▫ Which VMs are priority? ▫ How bad is it? ▫ Use free tools (vCOps foundation version)

Build the big win • Find the worst offender • Collect baseline performance • Make change recommendations • Implement the change ▫ Use change control

• Re-baseline performance • Hold a delta review

Set Policies and Precedence Provisioning Requests

Sit in as the trusted advisor Communicate with the application owner(s) Take ownership Have documented hard and soft limits Exceptions should be rare and well understood

Example Exemptions Most common: VBCA

Tier 1 SQL, Oracle, Exchange, etc. Silo into VBCA specific cluster?

New & unknown applications Start small, work upwards

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