VMworld 2015/Extreme vCenter Performance

Extreme vCenter Performance

Extreme vCenter Performance

vCenter Components:

• Web Client Server
• VPXD – primarily task execution, sends tasks to appropriate host, retrieves config changes, pushes config updates, inserts stats into db, responds to API requests
• SSO – single sign on (talks to Active Directory)
• Database
• Inventory Service (offload queries from VPXD)
• Various other services (eg Health and statistics)
• Content Library

Content Library performance: http://blogs.vmware.com/performance/2015/07/efficiently-deploy-vms-vmware-vsphere-content-library.html

vcenter appliance – vimtop (have to enable ssh)

What affects vcenter:

• ‘churn’ – out of the box settings should be fine for ‘light’ workloads
• Inventory size and host/vm configuration
• #of plugins/extensions
• Stats level and retention settings

Top Consumers:

• Inventory service (java) based on inventory size
• Vpxd (c++)
• ?
• ?

In 6.0 simply add more memory to VM and reboot, and the Heap sizes will be automatically adjusted. (This would not work in 5.5)

Most traffic is write traffic. SSDs provide a significant performance benefit over magnetic storage.