Newbie to VMware Vcenter Server - I need your guys help!

[NZCS]

Hi Everyone,

I deployed Vcenter Server into my organisation roughly 4 months ago and things have not been going very well...From outset I must say that VMware is a new experience for me and have not used it before so please accept my apologies if something that is obvious to you all may not be to me, but in the spirit of learning I am here to learn from you and improve myself...

What I have running:

6 x Virtual Servers - Of these 2 x are Windows 2008 R2 x64 Enterprise Terminal Servers, 1 x Windows 2003 Domain Controller (we have not changed to 2008 as we are awaiting SBS 2011), 1 x Windows 2003 SQL Server and 2 x Windows 2008 R2 x64 Enterprise servers for PABX software and Vcenter itself.

Our hardware comprises of 2 x DL380 G7's and 1 x HP P4300 7.2TB SAN...We have a HP/3com switch connecting this all together, on a seperate switch we have all of our client computers and the DLA380's are connected to this switch using a couple network ports. We have added extra network cards to these boxes.

Our issue:

SLOW performance at times...The DL308's have 36GB RAM each and 24 cores each. Especially on the TS servers, users frequently complain of jerky behaviour. We have decked each of the terminal servers out with 8GB of RAM each, 4 x vCPU's...Our user count is roughly 50 and this is evenly spread between each Terminal Server.

Questions:

1)  We have 1 x datastore for all of our virtual machines...Is this the correct way of handling all of our servers or should we have seperate datastores for each server?

2)  Is there a best practice document we can read to improve our deployment?

3)  Any advice or experience you can pass on will be invaluable.

Overall we enjoy the VM Technology and know that what we experiencing is not normal and more than likely our configuration we have wrong. I look forward to any suggestion or feedback you all can provide.

[VMGenie02]

Hi NZCS,

First, congratulations on having implemented the solution.  Can you tell me

-: What version and build you are running for your vCenter servers

-: What version and build you are running for your ESX(i) servers

-: Which vNic you are using on your guests

In my experience I have learnt to

-: Make sure to be running the latest version (or at least n -1) and build

-: Make sure all the guest have the updated vmtools

-: Make sure to be using the VMXNET3 vNic on guests

-: Create separate datastores for OS drives, SQL drives and application drives

Here is the link to best practice.

www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere4.0.pdf

My guess is that (1) you may be having some i/o contention on the datastore and (2) the vmtools and vnic will most definitely impact performance

[NZCS]

Thanks VMGenie02, these tips are very helpful. Just a question on the VMNET3 vNic - is there a recommended way of changing this over? We are currently running the E100 nic and don't want to muck things up by going in with all guns blazing. :smileygrin: Any advice on this would be appreciated.

[VMGenie02]

Hi,

I have never looked for 'recommended' way to change it but this is how I do it

1) In the guest OS... run "ipconfig /all > c:\output.txt" to capture the full IP settings including DNS and WINS

2) Configure the TCP/IP to auto

3) Open device manager and uninstall the E1000 nic

4) Shutdown the vm

5) Remove the E1000 and add the VMXNET3

6) Poweron the VM

7) Configure the IP settings...PS: use the output file to set it up correctly

😎 Make sure VMtools are updated

I'm assuming that you are using windows OS

Caution:  Make sure that the hosted applications are not bound to MAC address because that will change