v

vSphere Optimize
e and Sca
ale [5.1]
L
Lecture Manual Instruc
ctor Notes
Module 1 Slides
S
1-7 VMware Online
O Resources
Since this course uses the command line qquite a bit, you might point out a handy posterr available
at
http://blogs.vmware.com/essxi/2011/09/vsp
phere-50-cli-refeerence-poster.httml.

M
Module 3

Module 2 Slides
S
2-5 Methods to
t Run Comm
mands
Be brief on the slide. The next
n few slides d
describe ESXi S
Shell, vCLI, and vMA in more de
etail.

2-12 Configurin
ng vMA
Be brief on the slide. The next
n few slides d
discuss these ta
asks (deploy, co
onfigure, add tarrgets, and
e) in more detail
authenticate

2-22 esxcfg Equivalent vicfg

g Commands Example
A complete list of command
ds is available i n the vSphere 5
5.1 Documentattion Center.

2-23 Managing Hosts with vMA

Be brief on the slide. These
e tasks and com
mmands are disccussed on the n
next several slid
des.

2-38 esxcli Com

mmand Hierarchies
Be brief on the slide. Storag
ge-related esxccli commands an nd network-related esxcli commmands are
discussed in
n their respectiv
ve modules. Tel l the students th
hat they will use
e esxcli comman
nds in the
lab.

Module 3 Slides
S
3 -16 Basic Trou
ubleshooting Flow for ESX
Xi Hosts
Do not go in
nto detail about the problems lissted in the flowcchart. The key p
point of the slide
e is that a
troubleshoo
oting methodolog gy for ESXi hossts exists and th hat these problems are discussed in the
next severa
al modules.

3-21 What is Monitor

M Mode?
?
Although the ere are three wa
ays to impleme nt the monitor mmode (paravirtua alization, hardwware
n, and software virtualization), only hardware a
virtualization and software virrtualization tech
hniques are
discussed in n detail.

3-26 CPU Virtu

ualization Ove
erhead
For example e, on Intel architecture, the VM
M exit latency forr Prescott is abo
out 1,400 CPU ccycles. For
Cedar Mill itt is about 1,200 CPU cycles. MMerom is about 6 600 CPU cycless, Penryn is abo
out 500
CPU cycles s. Nehalem is ab bout 200 CPU ccycles.

vvSphere Optimize and Scale [5.1]

[ P
Page 1 of 4
LLecture Guide Instructor
I Note
es – October 20
012
 Module 4 Slides
4-10 Viewing Distributed Switches
Note that Cisco and IBM also have distributed switches.

4-43 User-Defined Network Resource Pools

In this release, Network I/O Control does not participate in the placement of virtual machines
through VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource Scheduler™ (DRS).

Module 5 Slides
5-9 Virtual Network Adapters
Here is some background on the e1000 and e1000e drivers: Intel supplied a driver for the
82545EM 1Gbps NIC that the e1000 driver emulated. Intel’s driver had several bugs, which the
VMware e1000 driver tried to fix. Intel then decided to end-of-life the 82545EM NIC. As a result,
the driver for this NIC was no longer shipped in new operating systems, so VMware released the
e1000e driver. This driver emulates the Intel 82574L NIC. The driver for the Intel 82574L NIC is
shipped on the install media of new operating systems.
To use the e1000e driver, you must edit the virtual machine’s properties and add a network
adapter, choosing e1000e as the network adapter type.

5-32 Lab 6 Review

Case 1 versus case 2: The packets transmitted and received should be higher for case 2 because
you are using a higher-performance network adapter.
Case 2 versus case 3: The packets transmitted and received should exceed 1Gbps because
network traffic is internal to the ESXi host. Network traffic does not touch the physical NICs.

5-61 Networking Best Practices

After students are finished with the exercise, review the solution with them. To do this, present the
slides in appendix A of your PowerPoint slide deck. Tell the students that the solution to this lab is
in appendix A of their lab guide.

Module 6 Slides
6-13 Virtual Machine Storage Profiles
Many of the ideas for virtual machine storage profiles came from the Host Profiles feature.

6-21 Identifying and Tagging SSD Devices

For information about the T10 standard, go to http://www.t10.org.

Module 7 Slides
7-14 What Affects VMFS Performance?
For steps on how to align a VMFS partition manually, see “Recommendations for Aligning VMFS
Partitions” at
http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/608. Although this paper is otherwise obsolete,
vSphere Optimize and Scale [5.1] Page 2 of 4
Lecture Guide Instructor Notes – October 2012
 Module 7 Slides
you can still use it for the manual alignment procedure.

7-16 VMFS Versus RDMs

This technical paper is a follow-on to an earlier performance study that compares the performance
of VMFS and RDM in ESX 3.0.1 (“Recommendations for Aligning VMFS Partitions”). At the time of
writing, there is no equivalent technical paper for vSphere.

7-72 Example 3: Logging In to Virtual Machines Is Slow

You might make this example interactive. Tell the students not to look ahead at the next few slides
and, as a class, try to identify the cause of the problem. Ask the students to interpret the data in
each slide.

Module 8 Slides
8-30 Lab 12 Review
Use the slide to discuss the lab results. To start, ask a student or team of students for their
recorded values and enter them in the table above.
Case 1 versus case 2: The values of opm (operations per minute) should be similar. The point
here is that having more vCPUs does not necessarily improve the application’s performance. You
might also see the value go down in case 2. This is because there is a bit more overhead with two
vCPUs.
Case 1 versus case 3: The amount of operations per minute should double. You should also see
an increase in %RDY.
Case 3 versus case 4: The amount of operations per minute increases with case 4. %RDY also
increases. The number of opms does not scale linearly. MySQL (which is the database used by
the test scripts) is distinctly nonlinear, unlike SQL Server, which is more linear.

Module 9 Slides
9-19 Sliding Scale Mem.MinFreePct
See the VMware vSphere Blog titled “Mem.MinFreePct sliding scale function” for a complete
discussion of how this feature works. http://blogs.vmware.com/vSphere/2012/05/memminfreepct-
sliding-scale-function.html

9-27 Consumed Host Memory and Active Guest Memory

The question posed in the slide is somewhat rhetorical because the answer is found in the last
paragraph of the student notes. However, you might pose this question to the students as a way to
reinforce the point that ballooning or host-level swapping could cause active memory to be
reclaimed.

9-28 Monitoring Memory Usage Using resxtop/esxtop

The question posed in the slide is somewhat rhetorical because the answer is found in the last
paragraph of the student notes. However, you might pose this question to the students as a way to
reinforce the point that ballooning or host-level swapping could cause active memory to be
reclaimed.

9-36 Lab 14 Review

Answers:

vSphere Optimize and Scale [5.1] Page 3 of 4

Lecture Guide Instructor Notes – October 2012
 Module 9 Slides
Yes, the values for MCTLSZ and MCTLTGT should have converged.
Yes, the values for SWCUR and SWTGT should have converged.
Workload11 through Workload16 do not have the balloon driver installed.
The test virtual machine, as well as Workload11 through Workload16, should have experienced
swapping. In addition, the %SWPWT value should have exceeded 5 percent for all of these virtual
machines.
Yes, the performance of the starttest4 script should have degraded, at least slightly.

9-46 Enabling Balloon Driver in Virtual Machines

Although disabling the balloon driver is strongly discouraged, you can disable the balloon driver by
setting the virtual machine parameter sched.mem.maxmemctl to 0. For more details, see VMware
knowledge base article 1002586 at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1002586.

Module 11 Slides
11-9 Searching Across vCenter Server Instances
If your permissions change while you are logged in, the search service might not immediately
recognize the changes. To ensure that your search is done with up-to-date permissions, log out of
all your open sessions and log in again before doing the search.
AD LDS information is backed up to the vCenter Server database once per day. If AD LDS is
corrupted and cannot start, vCenter Server uses the last backup stored in the vCenter Server
database to start AD LDS.
Depending on the audience, it might be also be useful to address common troubleshooting
scenarios and likely causes.
A common question: What is the minimum network bandwidth and what happens if a WAN
connection is broken?
AD LDS handles disconnects. The network bandwidth for AD LDS replication is based on a delta
scheme. So after the first sync (when a vCenter Server instance joins a Linked Mode group), the
bandwidth requirements should be minimal. The replication traffic depends on the size of the
inventory and the frequency of changes.

11-20 vSphere DPM Operation

vSphere DPM evaluates CPU and memory resource use of each host and aims to keep each
host’s resource use in the range of 45–81 percent (63 percent +/- 18 percent).ESXi hosts cannot
automatically be brought out of standby mode unless vCenter Server is running in the cluster.
Viewing DRS Recommendations.

11-58 What is Image Builder?

A cmdlet is a lightweight command that is used in the Windows PowerShell environment.

11-67 Learner Objectives

A GUI does exist for Auto Deploy at http://labs.vmware.com/flings/autodeploygui. The GUI is a
snapin to vCenter Server and is considered a technology preview.

vSphere Optimize and Scale [5.1] Page 4 of 4

Lecture Guide Instructor Notes – October 2012