VMware Performance and Capacity Management - Second Edition

Book description

Master SDDC Operations with proven best practices

About This Book

  • Understand the drawbacks of the traditional paradigm and management that make operations difficult in SDDC
  • Master performance and capacity management in Software-Defined Data Center
  • Operationalize performance and capacity monitoring with proven dashboards

Who This Book Is For

This book is primarily for any system administrator or cloud infrastructure specialist who is interested in performance management and capacity management using VMware technologies. This book will also help IT professionals whose area of responsibility is not VMware, but who work with the VMware team. You can be Windows, Linux, Storage, or Network team; or application architects. Note that prior exposure to the VMware platform of data-center and cloud-based solutions is expected.

What You Will Learn

  • Simplify the task of performance and capacity management
  • Master the counters in vCenter and vRealize Operations and understand their dependency on one another
  • Educate your peers and management on SDDC Operations
  • Complete your SDDC monitoring to include non-VMware components
  • Perform SDDC performance troubleshooting
  • Explore real-life examples of how super metric and advanced dashboards
  • Introduce and implement a Performance SLA
  • Accomplish your Capacity Management by taking into service tiering and performance SLA

In Detail

Performance management and capacity management are the two top-most issues faced by enterprise IT when doing virtualization. Until the first edition of the book, there was no in-depth coverage on the topic to tackle the issues systematically. The second edition expands the first edition, with added information and reorganizing the book into three logical parts.

The first part provides the technical foundation of SDDC Management. It explains the difference between a software-defined data center and a classic physical data center, and how it impacts both architecture and operations. From this strategic view, it zooms into the most common challenges - performance management and capacity management. It introduces a new concept called Performance SLA and also a new way of doing capacity management.

The next part provides the actual solution that you can implement in your environment. It puts the theories together and provides real-life examples created together with customers. It provides the reasons behind each dashboard, so that you get the understanding on why it is required and what problem it solves.

The last part acts as a reference section. It provides a complete reference to vSphere and vRealize Operations counters, explaining their dependencies and providing practical guidance on the values you should expect in a healthy environment.

Style and approach

This book covers the complex topic of managing performance and capacity in an easy-to-follow style. It relates real-world scenarios to topics in order to help you implement the book's teachings on the go.

Table of contents

  1. VMware Performance and Capacity Management Second Edition
    1. Table of Contents
    2. VMware Performance and Capacity Management Second Edition
    3. Credits
    4. Foreword
    5. Foreword
    6. About the Author
    7. Acknowledgments
    8. About the Reviewers
    9. www.PacktPub.com
      1. eBooks, discount offers, and more
        1. Why subscribe?
        2. Instant updates on new Packt books
    10. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. What this book is not
      5. Conventions
      6. Reader feedback
      7. Customer support
        1. Downloading the color images of this book
        2. Errata
        3. Piracy
        4. Questions
    11. Part 1
      1. Technical Introduction
    12. 1. VM – It Is Not What You Think!
      1. Our journey into the virtual world
      2. Not all virtualizations are equal
        1. Hardware partitioning
        2. OS partitioning
      3. Virtual Machine – it is not what you think!
      4. Physical server versus Virtual Machine
      5. Summary
    13. 2. Software-Defined Data Centers
      1. The software-defined data center
        1. The compute function
        2. The network function
        3. The storage function
        4. All together now
      2. SDDC versus HDDC
        1. Data Center
        2. Compute
        3. Storage
        4. Network
        5. Application
      3. Summary
    14. 3. SDDC Management
      1. What you manage has changed
      2. Management changes in SDDC
      3. The restaurant analogy
        1. The consumer layer
        2. The provider layer
      4. Contention versus utilization
      5. Performance and capacity management
        1. Performance
        2. Capacity
      6. Primary counters for monitoring
      7. Who uses which dashboards
      8. How many dashboards do I need?
      9. Summary
    15. 4. Performance Monitoring
      1. A day in the life of a VMware Admin
      2. What exactly is performance?
      3. Performance versus capacity
      4. Performance SLA
        1. CPU SLA
        2. Memory SLA
        3. Network SLA
        4. Storage SLA
      5. VDI SLA
      6. Summary
    16. 5. Capacity Monitoring
      1. Some well-meaning but harmful advice
      2. A shift in capacity management
      3. SDDC capacity planning
        1. Capacity planning at the compute level
        2. Capacity planning at the storage layer
        3. Capacity planning at the network layer
      4. When is a peak not a true peak?
      5. Putting it all together
        1. Availability – service definition
        2. Tier 1 compute monitoring
        3. Tier 2 and 3 compute monitoring
        4. Storage monitoring
        5. Network monitoring
        6. Conclusion
      6. VDI capacity planning
      7. VM rightsizing
      8. Summary
    17. Part 2
      1. Dashboards
    18. 6. Performance-Monitoring Dashboards
      1. What is the overall IaaS performance?
        1. Creating the super metrics
        2. Applying the super metrics
        3. Creating the dashboard
        4. The performance SLA line
          1. Step 1 – create a super metric to define the SLA
          2. Step 2 – create a group for each tier
          3. Step 3 – create policies for each group
          4. Step 4 – map super metrics to policy
          5. Step 5 – add the SLA to each line chart
          6. The resultant dashboard
        5. Alerts
        6. Which VMs are affected?
        7. Adapting the dashboards to different environments
      2. Are you serving my VM well?
      3. Is vMotion causing performance hit?
      4. Is any VM abusing the shared IaaS?
      5. Summary
    19. 7. Capacity-Monitoring Dashboards
      1. Tier 1 compute
        1. Tier 1 compute – CPU
        2. Tier 1 compute – RAM
        3. Tier 1 compute – VM
        4. Tier 1 compute – summary
      2. Tier 2 and 3 compute
      3. Storage
        1. Storage – performance
        2. Storage – utilization
      4. Network
      5. Putting it all together
      6. Enhancements to the dashboard
        1. The percentile chart
        2. Utilization information
      7. Rightsizing VMs
        1. Rightsizing large VMs
        2. Rightsizing vCPUs
          1. Step 1 – create a group
          2. Step 2 – create super metrics
          3. Step 3 – create a heatmap
          4. Step 4 – create a list
          5. Step 5 – create a detailed vCPU line chart
          6. Step 6 – add a percentile chart
          7. Step 7 – configure interaction
          8. The resultant dashboard
        3. Rightsizing memory
          1. Large VM groups
          2. Standard deviation
          3. The View object
      8. Summary
    20. 8. Specific-Purpose Dashboards
      1. Dashboards for the big screen
        1. The NOC availability dashboard
          1. Compute availability
          2. Storage availability
          3. Network availability
        2. The NOC performance dashboard
        3. The NOC capacity dashboard
        4. The NOC configuration dashboard
      2. Monitoring ESXi host temperature
      3. Dashboards for the storage team
        1. LUN performance monitoring
        2. VSAN performance monitoring
        3. VM performance monitoring
        4. Datastore capacity monitoring
      4. Dashboards for the network team
        1. Errors in the network
        2. Utilization of the network
        3. Special packets in the network
      5. Dashboards for the VDI team
        1. Is the DaaS serving the user well?
        2. Which VDI users need bigger VMs?
      6. Summary
    21. 9. Infrastructure Monitoring Using Blue Medora
      1. Overview
      2. NetApp storage
      3. F5 BIG-IP
      4. Cisco Nexus switches
      5. Cisco UCS
      6. Lenovo Compute
      7. Dell PowerEdge servers
      8. Summary
    22. 10. Application Monitoring Using Blue Medora
      1. Overview
      2. Microsoft SQL Server
      3. Oracle Enterprise Manager
      4. Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp
      5. IBM Tivoli
      6. IBM DB2
      7. SAP HANA
      8. Summary
    23. Part 3
      1. Counters
    24. 11. SDDC Key Counters
      1. Compute
      2. Storage
        1. ESXi and storage
        2. VMs and storage
      3. Network
        1. SDDC and network monitoring
        2. The source of the data
        3. Determining network workload
      4. Metric groups
        1. VM metric groups
        2. ESXi metric groups
        3. Cluster metric groups
        4. Datastore metric groups
        5. Datastore cluster metric groups
        6. Distributed switch metric groups
        7. Data center metric groups
        8. vCenter metric groups
        9. World metric groups
      5. Counters in vSphere and vRealize
      6. Summary
    25. 12. CPU Counters
      1. CPU counters at the VM level
        1. Contention counters
        2. The contention counter and power management
        3. The contention counter – why ready is not enough
        4. Utilization counters
        5. The Utilization counter – CPU workload
        6. Other counters
        7. VM CPU key counters
      2. CPU counters at the ESXi level
        1. Contention counters
        2. Utilization counters – key counters
        3. Utilization counters – secondary counters
        4. ESXi CPU key counters
      3. CPU counters at the cluster level
      4. CPU counters at higher levels
      5. Summary
    26. 13. Memory Counters
      1. Memory – not such a simple matter
      2. Memory counters at the Guest OS level
      3. Memory counters at the VM level
        1. Contention counters
        2. Utilization counters
        3. Other counters
        4. Putting it together
        5. VM memory key counters
      4. Memory counters at the ESXi level
        1. Contention counters
        2. Utilization counters
        3. Consumed versus Active
        4. ESXi memory key counters
      5. Memory counters at cluster level
      6. Memory counters at higher levels
      7. Summary
    27. 14. Storage Counters
      1. Multilayer storage
        1. Contention counters
        2. Utilization counters
      2. Storage counters at the VM level
        1. Putting it all together
        2. VM storage counters – summary
      3. Storage counters at the ESXi level
      4. Storage counters at the cluster level
      5. Storage counters at the datastore level
      6. Storage counters at the datastore cluster level
      7. Storage counters at higher levels
      8. Capacity monitoring
        1. At a glance
      9. VMware VSAN
        1. Monitoring VSAN
        2. Disk
        3. Disk groups
        4. VSAN hosts
        5. VSAN datastore
      10. Summary
    28. 15. Network Counters
      1. Network counters at the Guest OS level
      2. Network counters at the VM level
      3. Network counters at the ESXi level
      4. Network counters at the cluster level
      5. Network counters at the Distributed Switch level
      6. Network counters at the distributed port group level
      7. Network counters at higher levels
      8. Network counters in NSX
      9. Network counters for physical switches
      10. Summary
    29. Index

Product information

  • Title: VMware Performance and Capacity Management - Second Edition
  • Author(s): Iwan Rahabok
  • Release date: March 2016
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781785880315