Category Archives: VMware - Page 3

Optimizing performance using VAAI and the ESX MaxHWTransferSize setting

xcopy transfer size

If you’re running an EMC VNX using a lower version than block OE version 05.32.000.5.209, you might want to upgrade to the latest and greatest version (patch 209 or newer). The 209 offers EMC’s latest fixes and enhancements for VAAI performance. Many of the found performance issues have been fixed in the 209 code. However, in some environments sub-optimal performance has been detected with xcopy operations, or in some cases with the performance of non-xcopy IO during xcopy operations to the same pool.

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Fixing misalignment without moving data

Fixing misaligned partitions

It’s quite an old topic, but I recently found a great tool which allows you to re-align partitions without the need to manually move data from the misaligned disk to a new aligned disk.

First of all I must add that all the credits go to Nicholas Weaver, since he wrote the original blog and the actual tool!

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How to translate Windows disk ids to storage array’s LUNs

Converting disk information in a VM into the actual LUN information

We’ve all been there: you have a certain Windows virtual machine with several disks of the same size and you don’t know which Windows-disk is in fact which storage LUN.

The VMware settings for this VM might look like this:

VM-config

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Live VMware datastore expansion with running VMs

How to enlarge datastore capacity in Virtual Center?

There are several ways to get more disk storage available for your VMs running on VMware ESX. Adding an extra datastore is an option, but having multiple datastores creates an extra administrative overhead since you now have multiple datastores to monitor.

Another option is to simply extend an existing datastore. Live!

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VMware: “adaptive queue depth” setting

What is the recommended LUN queue depth throttling in VMware ESX/ESXi?

According to EMC this “adaptive queue depth” setting is not yet supported (June 2013). The full article can be found on this link. It is known as Primus solution id emc279718.

My advice would be not to use this setting until EMC certifies this setting for use with their arrays.

The exact Article is as follows:

What is the recommended LUN queue depth throttling in VMware ESX/ESXi?
 
  • Need to know QFullThreshold,QFullSampleSize & Queue Fulls values for VMware.
  • Host Connectivity Guide does not include any standard values.
  • Performance issues.
 
OS: VMware ESX / ESXi
Product: CLARiiON / Symmetrix and I assume VNX as well
 
According to Engineering, enabling the adaptive queue depth algorithm is NOT documented in the Host Connectivity Guide or the EMC Support Matrix.
The recommendation is to use the default setting which is disable adaptive queue depth.
Additional checks with E-Lab VMware quality engineers, E-Lab testing is done with the default setting.
 
See emc274169 for additional information and or changes.  Also see these two documents on support pages support.emc.com or Powerlink.Using EMC VNX Storage with VMware VsphereUsing EMC Clariion Storage with Vmware Vsphere & VMware Infracture Version 4.0