Proper resource allocation is critical to achieving top application performance in a virtualized environment. Resource contention degrades performance and underutilization can lead to costly server sprawl.
We found that adding VMTurbo to a VMware vSphere 5.5 cluster and following its reallocation recommendations gave our application performance a big boost. After reducing vCPU count, increasing memory allocation to active databases, and moving VMs to more responsive storage as VMTurbo directed, online transactions increased by 23.7 percent while latency dropped significantly. Avoid the pitfalls of poorly allocated VM resources and give your virtualized application every advantage by gaining control of your environment at every level.
Database performance and memory capacity with the Intel Xeon processor E5-266...Principled Technologies
The Dell PowerEdge M620 offers 24 memory slots, 50 percent more than the 16 slots offered by the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8, which enables the Dell solution to provide greater performance while delivering memory error protection. We found that the Dell PowerEdge M620 solution, built on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600v2 Series, delivered 182.2 percent more database performance and 92.0 percent faster response times than the previous version Intel Xeon E5-2640 processor-based HP ProLiant BL460c Gen 8 solution, while providing 12.5 percent more available memory and error protection. The additional memory capacity of the Dell solution allowed us to engage FRM technologies and still have more overall RAM capacity compared to the 16-slot HP server. The Dell PowerEdge M620 offered maximum memory capacity and protection with Fault Resilient Memory to keep your database workloads running strong and available for your business needs.
As the needs of your business grow, so must the power of your server infrastructure. Rather than purchasing replacement servers with base configurations, consider upgrading key components to ensure you get the performance you need.
We found that upgrading to the Dell PowerEdge R720 with the Intel Xeon processor E5-2697 v2, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system, Intel SSD DC S3700 series drive, and Intel Ethernet CNA X520 series adapters supported 4.5 times as many VMs as the previous-generation Dell PowerEdge R710 solution.
When you purchase a server, wisely selecting these components offered by Dell and Intel can allow your business to hit the sweet spot of supporting all your users without breaking the bank. Incremental upgrades also leave room to grow and help your infrastructure handle growth for years to come.
Finally, these select upgrades could translate to savings for your business—fewer servers you need to purchase now to meet performance demands, and a longer lifespan for these servers as your business continues to grow.
Resource balancing comparison: VMware vSphere 6 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Virtua...Principled Technologies
Having ample resources to handle user requests is a necessity of modern virtualization solutions. Allocating and distributing those resources evenly, however, is imperative to the success of your business’s virtualized environment. In our tests, after powering on the other two servers in our three-node cluster and adding resource management features, VMware vSphere 6 improved performance by 183 percent over its baseline configuration of one active server and no resource management features. RHEV 3.5, in contrast, delivered only a 79 percent increase over its baseline. As you design your business’s infrastructure and applications, improvements such as those offered by VMware vSphere 6 DRS and Storage DRS can play a critical role by offering your users better application experiences. Optimized and modern resource management provided by VMware DRS can also help to lower your IT purchase and maintenance costs by reducing the number of servers necessary to run your applications.
Minimizing licensing costs for enterprise applications is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down. When your applications use per-core licensing, choosing higher-performance servers with fewer cores dramatically reduces your software-related spending. The Dell PowerEdge M820 blade solution with Compellent storage could deliver up to $96,236 in savings as compared to a single HP ProLiant BL680c G7 solution, and if consolidating multiple workloads, could deliver even more savings in licensing costs when running Microsoft SQL Server in a virtualized scenario – all while maintaining or exceeding previous performance levels.
VMmark virtualization performance of Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SANPrincipled Technologies
The storage you use for your virtualization solution can be a significant factor in its performance and effectiveness. Two Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, paired with Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN, ran 10 VMmark tiles for a total of 80 running VMs and achieved a score of 12.05@10 tiles, making it the top score running VMware ESXi 5.5 of the 32-core server configurations. For enterprises that need excellent virtualization performance, this makes Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN a wise investment.
The switching method you choose for your SBC environment can help determine performance and the experience that end-users have. We found that unifying switching with Cisco VM-FEX resulted in up to 29 percent lower latency than a solution using a traditional vSwitch when running a Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop farm. Furthermore, the Cisco VM-FEX solution used up to 53 percent less CPU than the vSwitch solution did under extreme network conditions. In addition to these performance advantages, Cisco UCS Manager provides a central point of management and a simplified method to add vSphere hosts to the VM-FEX-enabled vSwitch, which can reduce management time and costs.
As our results show, switching to Cisco VM-FEX can provide your users with a more responsive environment.
Dell PowerEdge R920 and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Migration and Benefits GuidePrincipled Technologies
The latest Dell PowerEdge R920 server is designed to provide highly scalable performance for large enterprises, with greater memory capacity, improved and expanded attached storage options, and processor architectures designed for high availability. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the perfect companion software to take advantage of the Dell PowerEdge R920’s impressive specifications. Upgrading has never looked more attractive, and with hardware/software upgrades must come data migration.
Migrating legacy database applications to the latest database technologies on newer Dell server platforms is a common task for businesses upgrading their hardware/software stack. As this guide shows, the process is straightforward and the cost benefits can be enormous. We calculated the savings attainable from multiple consolidation ratios, as well as how long it would take to pay off the replacement server. We found that a consolidation ratio of 13 to 1 could yield $531,725 in software savings, many times the cost of the replacement hardware itself. So not only will the business benefit from the massively-scalable current-generation Dell server technology paired with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 running SQL Server 2014, but you can save money in the process.
Proper resource allocation is critical to achieving top application performance in a virtualized environment. Resource contention degrades performance and underutilization can lead to costly server sprawl.
We found that adding VMTurbo to a VMware vSphere 5.5 cluster and following its reallocation recommendations gave our application performance a big boost. After reducing vCPU count, increasing memory allocation to active databases, and moving VMs to more responsive storage as VMTurbo directed, online transactions increased by 23.7 percent while latency dropped significantly. Avoid the pitfalls of poorly allocated VM resources and give your virtualized application every advantage by gaining control of your environment at every level.
Database performance and memory capacity with the Intel Xeon processor E5-266...Principled Technologies
The Dell PowerEdge M620 offers 24 memory slots, 50 percent more than the 16 slots offered by the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8, which enables the Dell solution to provide greater performance while delivering memory error protection. We found that the Dell PowerEdge M620 solution, built on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600v2 Series, delivered 182.2 percent more database performance and 92.0 percent faster response times than the previous version Intel Xeon E5-2640 processor-based HP ProLiant BL460c Gen 8 solution, while providing 12.5 percent more available memory and error protection. The additional memory capacity of the Dell solution allowed us to engage FRM technologies and still have more overall RAM capacity compared to the 16-slot HP server. The Dell PowerEdge M620 offered maximum memory capacity and protection with Fault Resilient Memory to keep your database workloads running strong and available for your business needs.
As the needs of your business grow, so must the power of your server infrastructure. Rather than purchasing replacement servers with base configurations, consider upgrading key components to ensure you get the performance you need.
We found that upgrading to the Dell PowerEdge R720 with the Intel Xeon processor E5-2697 v2, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system, Intel SSD DC S3700 series drive, and Intel Ethernet CNA X520 series adapters supported 4.5 times as many VMs as the previous-generation Dell PowerEdge R710 solution.
When you purchase a server, wisely selecting these components offered by Dell and Intel can allow your business to hit the sweet spot of supporting all your users without breaking the bank. Incremental upgrades also leave room to grow and help your infrastructure handle growth for years to come.
Finally, these select upgrades could translate to savings for your business—fewer servers you need to purchase now to meet performance demands, and a longer lifespan for these servers as your business continues to grow.
Resource balancing comparison: VMware vSphere 6 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Virtua...Principled Technologies
Having ample resources to handle user requests is a necessity of modern virtualization solutions. Allocating and distributing those resources evenly, however, is imperative to the success of your business’s virtualized environment. In our tests, after powering on the other two servers in our three-node cluster and adding resource management features, VMware vSphere 6 improved performance by 183 percent over its baseline configuration of one active server and no resource management features. RHEV 3.5, in contrast, delivered only a 79 percent increase over its baseline. As you design your business’s infrastructure and applications, improvements such as those offered by VMware vSphere 6 DRS and Storage DRS can play a critical role by offering your users better application experiences. Optimized and modern resource management provided by VMware DRS can also help to lower your IT purchase and maintenance costs by reducing the number of servers necessary to run your applications.
Minimizing licensing costs for enterprise applications is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down. When your applications use per-core licensing, choosing higher-performance servers with fewer cores dramatically reduces your software-related spending. The Dell PowerEdge M820 blade solution with Compellent storage could deliver up to $96,236 in savings as compared to a single HP ProLiant BL680c G7 solution, and if consolidating multiple workloads, could deliver even more savings in licensing costs when running Microsoft SQL Server in a virtualized scenario – all while maintaining or exceeding previous performance levels.
VMmark virtualization performance of Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SANPrincipled Technologies
The storage you use for your virtualization solution can be a significant factor in its performance and effectiveness. Two Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, paired with Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN, ran 10 VMmark tiles for a total of 80 running VMs and achieved a score of 12.05@10 tiles, making it the top score running VMware ESXi 5.5 of the 32-core server configurations. For enterprises that need excellent virtualization performance, this makes Micron Enterprise PCIe SSD-based SAN a wise investment.
The switching method you choose for your SBC environment can help determine performance and the experience that end-users have. We found that unifying switching with Cisco VM-FEX resulted in up to 29 percent lower latency than a solution using a traditional vSwitch when running a Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop farm. Furthermore, the Cisco VM-FEX solution used up to 53 percent less CPU than the vSwitch solution did under extreme network conditions. In addition to these performance advantages, Cisco UCS Manager provides a central point of management and a simplified method to add vSphere hosts to the VM-FEX-enabled vSwitch, which can reduce management time and costs.
As our results show, switching to Cisco VM-FEX can provide your users with a more responsive environment.
Dell PowerEdge R920 and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Migration and Benefits GuidePrincipled Technologies
The latest Dell PowerEdge R920 server is designed to provide highly scalable performance for large enterprises, with greater memory capacity, improved and expanded attached storage options, and processor architectures designed for high availability. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the perfect companion software to take advantage of the Dell PowerEdge R920’s impressive specifications. Upgrading has never looked more attractive, and with hardware/software upgrades must come data migration.
Migrating legacy database applications to the latest database technologies on newer Dell server platforms is a common task for businesses upgrading their hardware/software stack. As this guide shows, the process is straightforward and the cost benefits can be enormous. We calculated the savings attainable from multiple consolidation ratios, as well as how long it would take to pay off the replacement server. We found that a consolidation ratio of 13 to 1 could yield $531,725 in software savings, many times the cost of the replacement hardware itself. So not only will the business benefit from the massively-scalable current-generation Dell server technology paired with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 running SQL Server 2014, but you can save money in the process.
Boosting performance with the Dell Acceleration Appliance for DatabasesPrincipled Technologies
If your business is expanding and you need to support more users accessing your databases, it’s time to act. Upgrading your database infrastructure with a flash storage-based solution is a smart way to improve performance without adding more servers or taking up very much rack space, which comes at a premium. The Dell Acceleration Appliance for Databases addresses this by providing strong performance when combined with your existing infrastructure or on its own.
We found that adding a highly available DAAD solution to our database application provided up to 3.01 times the Oracle Database 12c performance, which can make a big difference to your bottom line. Additionally, the DAAD delivered 3.14 times the database performance when replacing traditional storage completely, which could enable your infrastructure to keep up with your growing business’ needs.
Consolidate SAS 9.4 workloads with Intel Xeon processor E7 v3 and Intel SSD t...Principled Technologies
A key to modernizing your data center is to consolidate your legacy workloads through virtualization, which can help reduce complexity for your business. Fewer servers require fewer physical resources, such as power, cabling, and switches, and reduce the burden on IT for ongoing management tasks such as updates. In addition, integrating newer hardware technology into your data center can provide new features that strengthen your infrastructure, such as RAS features on the processor and disk performance improvements. Finally, using SAS 9.4 ensures that you have the latest features and toolsets that SAS can offer.
Compared to a legacy server, we found that a modern four-socket server powered by Intel Xeon processors E7-8890 v3 with Intel SSD DC P3700 Series provided 12 times the amount of SAS work, nearly 14 times the relative performance, and a shorter average time to complete the SAS workload. Running 12 virtual SAS instances also left capacity on the server for additional work. Consolidating your SAS workloads from legacy servers onto servers powered by Intel Xeon processors E7 v3 and SAS 9.4 can provide your business with the latest hardware and software features, reduce complexity in your data center, and potentially reduce costs for your business.
AWS EC2 M6i instances with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors accelerated...Principled Technologies
At multiple instance sizes, M6i instances classified more frames per second than M5n instances with previous-gen processors or M6a instances with 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors
VMware vSphere 7 Update 2 offered greater VM density and increased availabili...Principled Technologies
vSphere not only supported more VMs than the container native virtualization approach in OpenShift, but it required less downtime and less hands-on admin time
Nimboxx HCI AU-110x: A scalable, easy-to-use solution for hyperconverged infr...Principled Technologies
Hyperconvergence is a fresh way of looking at your data center. For small- and medium-sized businesses especially, it could be well worth your time to invest in a hyperconverged infrastructure. The MeshOS-operated Nimboxx HCI AU-110x offered scalability and great performance in our hands-on tests and was simple and straightforward to use, which could help your business meet user demands and potentially save money by avoiding things such as hiring expensive IT staff to maintain your data center.
Master VMware Performance and Capacity ManagementIwan Rahabok
12 Sep 2016 update: See this http://virtual-red-dot.info/operationalize-sddc-program-2/ for details.
-------------
Based on the book http://virtual-red-dot.info/performance-and-capacity-management/
Master performance and capacity management of VMware SDDC
TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER▸ NetBackup 7.6 Plugin for VMware vCenterSymantec
In NetBackup 7.6, the NetBackup plug-in for vCenter integrates with VMware’s vSphere Client user interface to provide new VMware virtual machine administration capabilities.
The plug-in enables VMware administrators…
▸ To monitor their Virtual machine backups directly from the VMware vSphere Client UI.
▸ To export virtual machine backup reports from the vSphere Client UI.
▸ Initiate full virtual machine recovery directly from a Recovery Portal in the vSphere Client UI.
Managing clients with Dell Client Integration Pack 3.0 and Microsoft System C...Principled Technologies
Client management is an important part of any enterprise. Employees have workstations in their offices or notebooks that travel with them around the globe, and efficient updates and remote management capabilities keep an organization’s IT assets ordered and secure. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 can provide a robust, efficient, management system for your IT infrastructure. Selecting clients that not only operate within your IT framework, but that have built-in software to integrate with it seamlessly to make client management tasks even easier is an intelligent strategy for your IT department.
In our tests, we found that Dell client management tools (Dell Client Integration Pack, Dell Client Configuration Toolkit, and Dell OpenManage Client Instrumentation) integrated in a typical SCCM 2012 environment reduced the steps it took to complete client management tasks by as much as 77 percent, and included a number of features that weren’t available with clients from HP and Lenovo.
Better Backup For All Symantec Appliances NetBackup 5220 Backup Exec 3600 May...Symantec
Symantec’s latest backup appliances, NetBackup 5220 and Backup Exec 3600, which now include the latest NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012 software from Symantec announced earlier this year. The new appliances deliver on Symantec’s Better Backup for All initiative to advance what Gartner has called “The Broken State of Backup.”
For more classes visit
www.snaptutorial.com
Exercise 1.1 Installing the Network Load Balancing Feature
Exercise 1.2 Creating a Windows Server 2012 NLB Cluster
Exercise 1.3 Configuring DNS
VMworld 2013: A Technical Deep Dive on VMware Horizon View 5.2 Performance an...VMworld
VMworld 2013
Banit Agrawal, VMware
Warren Ponder, VMware
Learn more about VMworld and register at http://www.vmworld.com/index.jspa?src=socmed-vmworld-slideshare
Reap better SQL Server OLTP performance with next-generation Dell EMC PowerEd...Principled Technologies
These new servers achieved up to 36.1 percent more OLTP database work than current-generation Dell EMC PowerEdge MX servers, while also lowering application response time
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: High available and scalable performance ...Principled Technologies
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations consisting of Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, Dell Force10 S4810P switches, and Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage provide a range of configuration options so that you can select the one that is right for your business needs. Additionally, each configuration is easily scalable to accommodate for business growth.
The 3-2-1 base configuration provides a robust solution for any business needing to support up to 500 users on multiple business applications. Our tests demonstrate this solution supporting 500 users per VM for four VMs including two database VMs, one email VM, and one collaboration application VM.
If the number of users you need to support exceeds the user count the base configuration provides, adding another Dell PowerEdge R720 server to make a 4-2-1 configuration can support up to 1,000 users on multiple business applications while maintaining high availability. Our tests demonstrate this solution supporting 1,000 users per VM in the same four VMs as the 3-2-1 solution. Additionally, these configurations are so easy to scale upward that you can complete the process of adding a server in a matter of two hours or less from start to finish.
If you require support for an even higher number of users, adding a server and storage array to the base configuration, to make a 4-2-2 configuration allows for up to 1,500 users on multiple business applications. Our tests demonstrated this when we ran 1,500 users against each of the four VMs. Better yet, adding a Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage array to an existing 4-2-1 configuration is a cinch, taking under 30 minutes start to finish.
All of these Dell Reference Configurations give your business the reliability of highly available hardware configurations, greatly reducing downtime resulting from any hardware malfunctions.
By choosing proven Dell architecture, you avoid the hassles of putting your infrastructure together piece by piece, reducing the potential for error and providing you with a sturdy solution that is easily scalable to fit your present and future needs.
Administrators can spend a great deal of time deploying and managing computing resources, especially when dealing with ROBO environments. The Dell PowerEdge VRTX, powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 v2 product family and running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, gives administrators centralized management tools to help them provide time saving benefits and integrated toolsets.
In our hands-on testing, we found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX greatly simplified deployment through an easy, wizard-based setup of Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clusters across server nodes with the Dell OpenManage Cluster Configurator. It also provided versatile hardware resource reassignment through a shared PCIe bus and efficient centralized management through CMC and scripting. Finally, we found that the Dell System Update Utility worked seamlessly with Microsoft Cluster-Aware Updating to update server nodes while keeping the failover cluster online and minimizing downtime. These advantages make the Dell PowerEdge VRTX an attractive choice for those who seek to reduce the management overhead of their ROBO environments.
This is described Couchbase Server's new feature and bug fix in 2013 based on Release Note of Couchbase Server Manual.
This slide made presentation in Couchbase meet up in japan at 2013/12/12.
By automating high-touch, routine tasks, Dell EMC OME integrations and plugins empower IT admins to deliver effective and efficient systems management from a single console.
Boosting performance with the Dell Acceleration Appliance for DatabasesPrincipled Technologies
If your business is expanding and you need to support more users accessing your databases, it’s time to act. Upgrading your database infrastructure with a flash storage-based solution is a smart way to improve performance without adding more servers or taking up very much rack space, which comes at a premium. The Dell Acceleration Appliance for Databases addresses this by providing strong performance when combined with your existing infrastructure or on its own.
We found that adding a highly available DAAD solution to our database application provided up to 3.01 times the Oracle Database 12c performance, which can make a big difference to your bottom line. Additionally, the DAAD delivered 3.14 times the database performance when replacing traditional storage completely, which could enable your infrastructure to keep up with your growing business’ needs.
Consolidate SAS 9.4 workloads with Intel Xeon processor E7 v3 and Intel SSD t...Principled Technologies
A key to modernizing your data center is to consolidate your legacy workloads through virtualization, which can help reduce complexity for your business. Fewer servers require fewer physical resources, such as power, cabling, and switches, and reduce the burden on IT for ongoing management tasks such as updates. In addition, integrating newer hardware technology into your data center can provide new features that strengthen your infrastructure, such as RAS features on the processor and disk performance improvements. Finally, using SAS 9.4 ensures that you have the latest features and toolsets that SAS can offer.
Compared to a legacy server, we found that a modern four-socket server powered by Intel Xeon processors E7-8890 v3 with Intel SSD DC P3700 Series provided 12 times the amount of SAS work, nearly 14 times the relative performance, and a shorter average time to complete the SAS workload. Running 12 virtual SAS instances also left capacity on the server for additional work. Consolidating your SAS workloads from legacy servers onto servers powered by Intel Xeon processors E7 v3 and SAS 9.4 can provide your business with the latest hardware and software features, reduce complexity in your data center, and potentially reduce costs for your business.
AWS EC2 M6i instances with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors accelerated...Principled Technologies
At multiple instance sizes, M6i instances classified more frames per second than M5n instances with previous-gen processors or M6a instances with 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors
VMware vSphere 7 Update 2 offered greater VM density and increased availabili...Principled Technologies
vSphere not only supported more VMs than the container native virtualization approach in OpenShift, but it required less downtime and less hands-on admin time
Nimboxx HCI AU-110x: A scalable, easy-to-use solution for hyperconverged infr...Principled Technologies
Hyperconvergence is a fresh way of looking at your data center. For small- and medium-sized businesses especially, it could be well worth your time to invest in a hyperconverged infrastructure. The MeshOS-operated Nimboxx HCI AU-110x offered scalability and great performance in our hands-on tests and was simple and straightforward to use, which could help your business meet user demands and potentially save money by avoiding things such as hiring expensive IT staff to maintain your data center.
Master VMware Performance and Capacity ManagementIwan Rahabok
12 Sep 2016 update: See this http://virtual-red-dot.info/operationalize-sddc-program-2/ for details.
-------------
Based on the book http://virtual-red-dot.info/performance-and-capacity-management/
Master performance and capacity management of VMware SDDC
TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER▸ NetBackup 7.6 Plugin for VMware vCenterSymantec
In NetBackup 7.6, the NetBackup plug-in for vCenter integrates with VMware’s vSphere Client user interface to provide new VMware virtual machine administration capabilities.
The plug-in enables VMware administrators…
▸ To monitor their Virtual machine backups directly from the VMware vSphere Client UI.
▸ To export virtual machine backup reports from the vSphere Client UI.
▸ Initiate full virtual machine recovery directly from a Recovery Portal in the vSphere Client UI.
Managing clients with Dell Client Integration Pack 3.0 and Microsoft System C...Principled Technologies
Client management is an important part of any enterprise. Employees have workstations in their offices or notebooks that travel with them around the globe, and efficient updates and remote management capabilities keep an organization’s IT assets ordered and secure. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 can provide a robust, efficient, management system for your IT infrastructure. Selecting clients that not only operate within your IT framework, but that have built-in software to integrate with it seamlessly to make client management tasks even easier is an intelligent strategy for your IT department.
In our tests, we found that Dell client management tools (Dell Client Integration Pack, Dell Client Configuration Toolkit, and Dell OpenManage Client Instrumentation) integrated in a typical SCCM 2012 environment reduced the steps it took to complete client management tasks by as much as 77 percent, and included a number of features that weren’t available with clients from HP and Lenovo.
Better Backup For All Symantec Appliances NetBackup 5220 Backup Exec 3600 May...Symantec
Symantec’s latest backup appliances, NetBackup 5220 and Backup Exec 3600, which now include the latest NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012 software from Symantec announced earlier this year. The new appliances deliver on Symantec’s Better Backup for All initiative to advance what Gartner has called “The Broken State of Backup.”
For more classes visit
www.snaptutorial.com
Exercise 1.1 Installing the Network Load Balancing Feature
Exercise 1.2 Creating a Windows Server 2012 NLB Cluster
Exercise 1.3 Configuring DNS
VMworld 2013: A Technical Deep Dive on VMware Horizon View 5.2 Performance an...VMworld
VMworld 2013
Banit Agrawal, VMware
Warren Ponder, VMware
Learn more about VMworld and register at http://www.vmworld.com/index.jspa?src=socmed-vmworld-slideshare
Reap better SQL Server OLTP performance with next-generation Dell EMC PowerEd...Principled Technologies
These new servers achieved up to 36.1 percent more OLTP database work than current-generation Dell EMC PowerEdge MX servers, while also lowering application response time
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: High available and scalable performance ...Principled Technologies
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations consisting of Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, Dell Force10 S4810P switches, and Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage provide a range of configuration options so that you can select the one that is right for your business needs. Additionally, each configuration is easily scalable to accommodate for business growth.
The 3-2-1 base configuration provides a robust solution for any business needing to support up to 500 users on multiple business applications. Our tests demonstrate this solution supporting 500 users per VM for four VMs including two database VMs, one email VM, and one collaboration application VM.
If the number of users you need to support exceeds the user count the base configuration provides, adding another Dell PowerEdge R720 server to make a 4-2-1 configuration can support up to 1,000 users on multiple business applications while maintaining high availability. Our tests demonstrate this solution supporting 1,000 users per VM in the same four VMs as the 3-2-1 solution. Additionally, these configurations are so easy to scale upward that you can complete the process of adding a server in a matter of two hours or less from start to finish.
If you require support for an even higher number of users, adding a server and storage array to the base configuration, to make a 4-2-2 configuration allows for up to 1,500 users on multiple business applications. Our tests demonstrated this when we ran 1,500 users against each of the four VMs. Better yet, adding a Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage array to an existing 4-2-1 configuration is a cinch, taking under 30 minutes start to finish.
All of these Dell Reference Configurations give your business the reliability of highly available hardware configurations, greatly reducing downtime resulting from any hardware malfunctions.
By choosing proven Dell architecture, you avoid the hassles of putting your infrastructure together piece by piece, reducing the potential for error and providing you with a sturdy solution that is easily scalable to fit your present and future needs.
Administrators can spend a great deal of time deploying and managing computing resources, especially when dealing with ROBO environments. The Dell PowerEdge VRTX, powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 v2 product family and running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, gives administrators centralized management tools to help them provide time saving benefits and integrated toolsets.
In our hands-on testing, we found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX greatly simplified deployment through an easy, wizard-based setup of Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clusters across server nodes with the Dell OpenManage Cluster Configurator. It also provided versatile hardware resource reassignment through a shared PCIe bus and efficient centralized management through CMC and scripting. Finally, we found that the Dell System Update Utility worked seamlessly with Microsoft Cluster-Aware Updating to update server nodes while keeping the failover cluster online and minimizing downtime. These advantages make the Dell PowerEdge VRTX an attractive choice for those who seek to reduce the management overhead of their ROBO environments.
This is described Couchbase Server's new feature and bug fix in 2013 based on Release Note of Couchbase Server Manual.
This slide made presentation in Couchbase meet up in japan at 2013/12/12.
By automating high-touch, routine tasks, Dell EMC OME integrations and plugins empower IT admins to deliver effective and efficient systems management from a single console.
Obesity is one of the most common factor which underlies the pathophysiology of many other non- communicable diseases. In recent years, its prevalence has blown out of proportions. The term GLOBESITY signfies that. Newer pharmacological developments will definitely play a crucial role in containing this epidemic.
This seminar is my attempt this interesting topic with all the latest data I could collect on the internet.
CPU performance comparison of two cloud solutions: VMware vCloud Hybrid Servi...Principled Technologies
Business computing is making its way to the cloud in a dramatic fashion. Selecting the right cloud service provider is a pivotal decision that could have a significant effect on how much your company benefits from this move.
Throughout our CPU tests, we found that VMware vCloud Hybrid Service instances performed dramatically better than Microsoft Azure instances in all virtual processor configurations, earning consistently higher SPEC CPU2006 scores.
By choosing a cloud service that can deliver stronger processing performance, you can ensure that you are giving your applications the necessary vCPU resources to perform well and making the most of your investment in the cloud platform.
Virtualization is an increasingly critical part of data center computing. Selecting a server that excels at virtualization makes good business sense. Two Lenovo ThinkServer RD630 servers, paired with Dot Hill AssuredSAN Pro5720 tiered storage, ran 10 VMmark tiles for a total of 80 running VMs and achieved a score of 11.17@10 tiles, placing it in the top 8 percent of the 32-core server configurations. This makes the Lenovo ThinkServer RD630 an excellent choice for any enterprise that uses virtualization.
In our tests, ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM saved administrative time and effort. Based on our analysis, these savings can translate into significant OPEX savings.
Furthermore, the ability to integrate with orchestration applications and cloud stacks and to leverage officially unsupported storage via a third-party block provider means that ViPR Controller can benefit your organization across your service portfolio. When coupled with the additional OPEX savings found through reductions in change control and improved site management, ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM can improve your organization’s bottom line, providing millions of dollars in OPEX savings.
VMware vCloud Automation Center, which has been renamed vRealize Automation as part of the vRealize Cloud Management Platform, automates the process of provisioning database virtual machines, and is designed by VMware to help IT without sacrificing control, security, or flexibility. Automating time-consuming processes has the potential to enable growth, improve service quality, and free IT resources for innovation and process improvement. As businesses continue to evolve and grow, DBAs and IT departments must be able to keep up with demand. Quick and easy access to self-service portals, a streamlined provisioning process that incorporates IT best practices and security policies, and fast delivery of VMs all attribute to avoiding delays and providing for increasing demands. DBAs and IT retain control of the content, upgrades, provisioning, and accessibility of the database VMs while still able to quickly provide virtualized environments to meet the needs of their business.
The first Technology driven reality competition showcasing the incredible virtualization community members and their talents. Virtually Everywhere · virtualdesignmaster.com
Most medium and large-sized IT organizations have deployed several generations of virtualized servers, and they have become more comfortable with the performance and reliability with each deployment. As IT organizations increased virtual machine (VM) density, they reached the limits of vSphere software, server memory, CPU, and I/O.
A new VM engine is now available and this document describes how it can help IT organizations maximize use of their servers running VMware® vSphere® 5.1 (henceforth referred to as vSphere 5.1).
FEATRURE BRIEF▶ NetBackup 7.6 - Direct virtual machine creation from backup w...Symantec
Feature Description
The last few years have seen a significant growth in the adoption of virtualized servers in data centers with many organizations converting to purely virtual environments. Even organizations that use physical servers in their production environments are starting to see the benefits of using virtualization in their disaster recovery and test and development environments. NetBackup’s Bare Metal Restore (BMR) feature has always provided an effective mechanism for migrating between physical and virtual environments by recovering backups of physical servers to virtual servers. In NetBackup 7.6 this “physical to virtual” recovery model has been greatly simplified allowing customers to achieve rapid physical to virtual migration and disaster recovery to virtual environments for Windows servers in both local and remote (disaster recovery) sites.
Business Value
The Bare Metal Restore “physical to virtual” recovery capability allows customers to recover backups of physical Windows servers to VMware virtual machines. Using VMware virtualization in a disaster recovery data center can significantly reduce both the capital and operational costs associated with maintaining a disaster recovery position by allowing a “lights out” facility to be rapidly spun up in the event of a site loss.
Bare Metal Restore “physical to virtual” can be combined the NetBackup Auto Image Replication feature, allowing backup of physical servers to be replicated to a remote data center. VMware ESX servers at this disaster recovery facility can be left powered off until required and then powered up. Once the ESX servers are available the replicated backups of the physical servers at the product site can be quickly restored to virtual machines running on the ESX servers rather than needing to deploy physical servers. For disaster recovery testing purposes the virtual machines created during the recovery process can simply be deleted once the testing activities are complete. A similar approach can be used in test and development environments with backups from physical production servers being used to create virtual test servers.
Increase density and performance with upgrades from Intel and MicrosoftPrincipled Technologies
As the needs of your business grow, so must the power of your server infrastructure. Rather than purchasing replacement servers with base configurations, consider upgrading key components to ensure you get the performance you need.
In our tests, we found that upgrading a server with the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2697v2, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 operating system, Intel SSD DC S3700 series drive, and Intel Ethernet CNA X520 series adapters supported 3.5 times more VMs than the legacy server we tested, which also meant 3.5 times the database performance and Exchange user mailboxes. Upgrading components piece by piece can improve your server capacity, but upgrading the processor, OS, storage, and network configuration together provided the biggest increase in our tests. By investing in upgraded components from Intel and Microsoft, you can get the most out of your server infrastructure both now and in the future.
As the needs of your business grow, so must the power of your server infrastructure. Rather than purchasing replacement servers with base configurations, consider upgrading key components to ensure you get the performance you need.
In our tests, we found that upgrading a server with the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2697v2, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 operating system, Intel SSD DC S3700 series drive, and Intel Ethernet CNA X520 series adapters supported 3.5 times more VMs than the legacy server we tested, which also meant 3.5 times the database performance and Exchange user mailboxes. Upgrading components piece by piece can improve your server capacity, but upgrading the processor, OS, storage, and network configuration together provided the biggest increase in our tests. By investing in upgraded components from Intel and Microsoft, you can get the most out of your server infrastructure both now and in the future.
Strange but true: most infrastructure architectures are deliberately designed from the outset to need little or no change over their lifetimes. There are two main reasons for this:
1. Change often means outages and customer impact and must be avoided
2. Budgets are set at the beginning of a project and getting more cash later is tough
Typically, then, applications are configured with all of the storage capacity they need to support the wildest dreams of their business sponsors (and then some extra is added for contingency by IT). Equally, storage is always configured with the performance level (storage tier) set to cope with the wildest transactional dreams of the business sponsor (and guess what? IT generally adds a bit more for good measure.).
No wonder storage is now one of the largest cost components involved in delivering and running a business application.
This is a paper was written by David Reine, an IT analyst for The Clipper Group, and highlights IBM’s SAN Volume Controller new features, capabilities and benefits. These new capabilities were announced on October 20, 2009Virtualization is at the center of all 21st Century IT systems, yet many CIOs fail to fully understand all of the benefits it can deliver to the data center operation. When we think of virtualization, we think compute, network, and storage—and we mostly think about driving up utilization on each. Storage controllers have always offered the ability to carve out pieces of real storage from a large pool and deliver them efficiently to a number of hosts, but it is storage virtualization itself that offers improvements that drive operational efficiency. IBM has been quietly addressing storage virtualization with SAN Volume Controller (SVC) for the last six years, building up a significant technical lead in this space.
VMware vSphere vMotion: 5.4 times faster than Hyper-V Live MigrationVMware
Businesses using a virtualized infrastructure have many reasons to move active virtual machines (VMs) from one physical server to another. Whether the migrations are for routine maintenance, balancing performance needs, work distribution (consolidating VMs onto fewer servers during non-peak hours to conserve resources), or another reason, the best virtual infrastructure platform executes the move as quickly as possible and with minimal impact to end users.
We tested two competing features that move active VMs from one server to another, VMware vSphere 5 vMotion and Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V Live Migration. While both perform these moves with no VM downtime, in our testing the VMware solution did so faster, with greater application stability, and with less impact to application performance – clearly showing that not all live migration technologies are the same. VMware also holds an enormous advantage in concurrency: VMware vSphere 5 can move eight VMs at a time while a Microsoft Hyper-V cluster node can take part only as the source or destination in one live migration at a time. In our two test scenarios, the VMware vMotion solution was up to 5.4 times faster than the Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration solution.
Symantec NetBackup 7.6 benchmark comparison: Data protection in a large-scale...Principled Technologies
In an enterprise environment, a data center VM footprint can grow quickly; large-scale deployments of thousands of virtual machines are becoming increasingly common. Risk of failure grows proportionally to the number of systems deployed and critical failures are unavoidable. Your ability to offer data protection from a backup solution is critical to business continuity. Elongated, inefficient protection windows can create resource contention with production environments, therefore, it is critical to execute system backup in a finite window of time.
The Symantec NetBackup Integrated Appliance running NetBackup 7.6 offered application protection to 1,000 VMs in 80.3 percent less time in SAN testing and used NetApp array-based snapshots to create recovery points in 93.8 percent less time than Competitor “C.” In addition, the Symantec NetBackup Integrated Appliance with NetBackup 7.6 created backup images that offered granular recovery without additional steps and in a backup window 69.0 percent shorter than the backup window needed for Competitor “C.” These time savings can scale as your VM footprint grows, allowing you to execute both system protection and user-friendly, simplified recovery.
Fault tolerance performance and scalability comparison: NEC hardware-based FT...Principled Technologies
Being able to rely on your server solution to deliver uncompromising levels of performance across a large number of VMs and to maintain these levels during an outage is a very appealing prospect. NEC Express5800/R320d-M4 servers with hardware-based fault tolerance can let you do just this.
In our datacenter, the hardware-based NEC solution with eight VMs achieved more than 2.4 times the performance of the software-based solution using VMware vSphere and recovered from a service interruption without downtime or performance loss. In addition, the hardware-based NEC solution did not require a dedicated 10-Gigabit network infrastructure to provide fault tolerance to the VMs. These advantages make the NEC Express5800/R320d-M4 server an excellent option for those businesses that don’t want to choose between strong performance and fault tolerance.
Component upgrades from Intel and Dell can increase VM density and boost perf...Principled Technologies
As the needs of your business grow, so must the power of your server infrastructure. Rather than purchasing replacement servers with base configurations, consider upgrading key components to ensure you get the performance you need.
We found that upgrading to the Dell PowerEdge R730 with the Intel Xeon processor E5-2699 v3, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system, Intel SSD DC S3700 series drive, and Intel Ethernet CNA X520 series adapters supported an extra 16 VMs, 67 percent more VMs than the previous-generation Dell PowerEdge R720 solution.
When you purchase a server, wisely selecting these components offered by Dell and Intel can allow your business to hit the sweet spot of supporting all your users without breaking the bank. The option to upgrade server components can provide your infrastructure with room to grow in the future, as your business needs increase.
Finally, these select upgrades could translate to savings for your business—fewer servers you need to purchase now to meet performance demands and a longer lifespan for these servers as your business continues to grow.
Component upgrades from Intel and Dell can increase VM density and boost perf...
VMTurbo Performance Study
1. FEBRUARY 2015
A PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES REPORT
Commissioned by VMTurbo, Inc.
USING VMTURBO TO BOOST PERFORMANCE
Assuring application performance in today’s virtualized datacenters is an
increasingly complex task. Out of the box, vendor-specific hypervisor tools do a good job
of balancing datacenter resources for a virtual infrastructure, but do they guarantee or
improve application performance? VMTurbo Operations Manager helps you make VM
resource decisions at a granular level to take your application performance to the next
level. Installed on a management server, VMTurbo assesses how each VM is using
resources, and recommends reallocating certain resources to help you get the most
performance possible from your databases.
In the Principled Technologies datacenter, we added VMTurbo to a DRS-enabled
VMware vSphere 5.5 cluster to see what it could do. After running a baseline application
performance test, VMTurbo recommended that we reduce vCPU count in each VM and
increase memory to database VMs, enabling our databases to handle 9.6 percent more
orders per minute with 17.7 percent better response times. With data from that test
run, VMTurbo suggested we again increase memory allocation and move some VMs to
more responsive storage, which resulted in 23.7 percent more OPM and 37.1 percent
better response times compared to the baseline configuration.
In a virtualized application, every order counts. When you add VMTurbo to your
environment, you can see the immediate improvement in performance from the first
time you implement the recommended changes.
2. A Principled Technologies report 2Using VMTurbo to boost performance
WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT TO MAXIMIZE PERFORMANCE?
Maximizing performance is vital to the success of a hosted virtual application: If
you overtax your resources, users will have a degraded experience, and if you
underutilize them, you’ll wind up needing additional servers. That means additional
expenses that include hardware costs, licensing costs, operating costs, and even
datacenter space costs. By finding the right allocation for physical and virtual resources,
you can optimize your environment and avoid these costly mistakes.
HOW VMTURBO GETS THE JOB DONE
VMTurbo Operations Manager is a demand-driven control platform that looks at
the specifics of a virtualized environment and assesses how you can make alterations
that maximize resource utilization. By understanding application and VM demand and
then meeting that demand with available compute, storage, and network resources,
VMTurbo helps you prevent performance issues in real time. VMTurbo assures that
workloads don’t suffer through trial and error resource allocation when demands
fluctuate. Because VMTurbo understands the demand of your applications and VMs and
the available infrastructure resources it makes decision at a granular level (e.g., vCPU,
memory, and storage location), it assures application performance and takes it to an
even higher level. Visit the VMTurbo Web site at www.vmturbo.com to learn more.
JUST THE FACTS
We found that adding VMTurbo to our virtualized environment and following its
simple recommendations increased orders per minute from 191,229 to 236,537 after
two test runs. Latency, or the average response time, also decreased by 37.1 percent.
(See Figure 1.)
Figure 1: When we implemented VMTurbo’s recommendations, application performance increased and average latency, or
response time, plummeted.
3. A Principled Technologies report 3Using VMTurbo to boost performance
IN OUR DATACENTER
For testing, we set up a VMware vSphere 5.5 cluster on three blade servers.
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler™ (DRS) assessed resource utilization at a
VM/server level, and distributed our 33 VMs equally on the servers for optimization.
Twenty-one VMs ran SQL Server 2014, and 12 ran IIS Web servers for the SQL clients to
connect to. We ran our ecommerce workload on 12 of the SQL Server VMs; the other 9
were idle. Our small-scale testing environment is intended to illustrate how VMTurbo
works to optimize resources to boost performance in a typical three-tier application.
Our testing environment used a three-server cluster to show this advantage, but the
functionality of VMTurbo is not limited in any way to this scale. According to VMTurbo,
the single virtual appliance we deployed in our test “scales to 10,000 virtual machines
and holds two years of data.”1
See Appendix A for system configuration information and Appendix B for step-
by-step testing details.
VMTURBO ALLOWED US IMPROVE APPLICATION PERFORMANCE
For our first test, we ran the workloads on our server cluster that had been
optimized only at the VM level by VMware DRS. VMTurbo ran on a management server
and gathered performance data during the baseline run. VMTurbo recommended we
decrease vCPU allocation for the SQL Server VMs from 16 to 8 and allocate more
memory to some SQL Server VMs to increase performance. We implemented those
recommendations and ran the test again. VMTurbo’s suggestions increased application
performance by 9.6 percent.
During the second run, VMTurbo continued to improve application performance
with two more real-time recommendations: 1) to increase memory allocation to
additional SQL Server VMs and 2) to move some VMs to more responsive storage. After
we made these changes, we ran our ecommerce workload a third time. We found that
performance increased even further, to 23.7 percent more than the baseline without
VMTurbo recommendations. Figure 2 compares the total application performance of
the servers during each test run.
1
vmturbo.com/product/
4. A Principled Technologies report 4Using VMTurbo to boost performance
Figure 2:
Implementing
VMTurbo
recommendations
improved total
application
performance.
191,229
209,522
236,537
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
Without VMTurbo After first reallocation After second reallocation
Ordersperminute
Total application performance
(higherisbetter)
As Figure 3 shows, though performance varied by client, implementing
VMTurbo reallocation recommendations improved performance over each run.
Figure 3: How
VMTurbo reallocation
recommendations
improved application
performance, by client.
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Ordersperminute
Client
Application performanceby client
(higherisbetter)
Without
VMTurbo
After first
reallocation
After second
reallocation
Another measure that indicates how well your applications are performing is
the latency that the server experiences when completing an order. The higher the
latency, the longer the wait. Figure 4 shows how the average latency dropped as we
implemented VMTurbo’s recommendations for better performance. By the third test
run, latency decreased by 37.1 percent.
5. A Principled Technologies report 5Using VMTurbo to boost performance
Figure 4: Average
latency dropped
significantly as we
implemented
VMTurbo’s
suggestions.
Figure 5 shows how latency decreased for each client throughout our tests.
Figure 5: Latency, in
milliseconds, by client.
6. A Principled Technologies report 6Using VMTurbo to boost performance
CONCLUSION
Proper resource allocation is critical to achieving top application performance in
a virtualized environment. Resource contention degrades performance and
underutilization can lead to costly server sprawl.
We found that adding VMTurbo to a VMware vSphere 5.5 cluster and following
its reallocation recommendations gave our application performance a big boost. After
reducing vCPU count, increasing memory allocation to active databases, and moving
VMs to more responsive storage as VMTurbo directed, online transactions increased by
23.7 percent while latency dropped significantly. Avoid the pitfalls of poorly allocated
VM resources and give your virtualized application every advantage by gaining control
of your environment at every level.
7. A Principled Technologies report 7Using VMTurbo to boost performance
APPENDIX A – SYSTEM CONFIGURATION INFORMATION
Figure 6 provides detailed configuration information for the test systems. All three Cisco UCS® B200 M2 blades
were configured identically.
System Cisco UCS B200 M2 Blade Server
Enclosure
Blade enclosure Cisco UCS 5108
Power Supplies
Total number 4
Wattage of each (W) 2,500
Cooling fans
Total number 8
General
Number of processor packages 2
Number of cores per processor 6
Number of hardware threads per core 2
System power management policy High Performance
CPU
Vendor Intel®
Name Xeon®
Model number X5760
Stepping C0
Socket type LGA1366
Core frequency (GHz) 2.93
Bus frequency 8.0. GT/s
L1 cache 192 KB
L2 cache 1.5 MB
L3 cache 12 MB
Platform
Vendor and model number Cisco UCS B200 M2
Motherboard model number N20-B6625-1
BIOS name and version Cisco® S5500.2.1.3.0.081620131102
BIOS settings Default
Memory module(s)
Total RAM in system (GB) 96
Vendor and model number Micron® MT36KSZF1G72PZ-1G4D1AD
Type DDR3-1333 PC3-10600
Speed (MHz) 1,333
Speed running in the system (MHz) 1,333
Size (GB) 8
Number of RAM module(s) 12
Chip organization Double-sided
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System Cisco UCS B200 M2 Blade Server
Operating system
Name VMware vSphere 5.5.0
Build number 2143827
Language English
RAID controller
Vendor and model number LSI Logic® SAS 1064E
Firmware version 01.32.09.00
Hard drives
Vendor and model number Seagate® ST9146803SS
Number of drives 2
Size (GB) 146
RPM 10,000
Type SAS
Network adapter
Vendor and model number Cisco UCS M81KR
Figure 6: System configuration information for the test systems.
9. A Principled Technologies report 9Using VMTurbo to boost performance
APPENDIX B – HOW WE TESTED
To test VMTurbo’s ability to improve performance, we created a three-node cluster in VMware vCenter™ 5.5
and evenly distributed an OLTP-based workload across all three hosts. To simulate a realistic mixed environment of a
Web-based online store, we deployed IIS-based Web servers to process the requests from the test clients, which then
requested data from back-end Microsoft® SQL servers. We used DVD Store as the benchmark tool to generate the
workload and evaluate the performance of the environment.
About DVD Store Version 2.1
To create our real-world ecommerce workload, we used the DVD Store Version 2.1 (DS2) benchmarking tool.
DS2 models an online DVD store, where customers log in, search for movies, and make purchases. DS2 reports these
actions in orders per minute that the system could handle, to show what kind of performance you could expect for your
customers. The DS2 workload also performs other actions, such as adding new customers, to exercise the wide range of
database functions you would need to run your ecommerce environment.
For more details about the DS2 tool, see www.delltechcenter.com/page/DVD+Store.
Test bed configuration
Figure 7 shows a diagram of our test bed. The blade chassis was connected to a 10Gb NFS NAS storage array and
an 8Gb Fibre Channel storage array.
Figure 7: Test bed diagram.
10. A Principled Technologies report 10Using VMTurbo to boost performance
Configuring the test bed
Installing VMware ESXi™ 5.5 on the infrastructure servers and servers under test
1. Connect to the UCS server via KVM and attach the installation media.
2. Boot the server.
3. At the VMware Installer screen, press Enter.
4. At the EULA screen, to Accept and Continue, press F11.
5. Under Storage Devices, select the appropriate virtual disk, and press Enter.
6. For keyboard layout, select US, and press Enter.
7. Enter the root password twice, and press Enter.
8. To start installation, press F11.
9. After the server reboots, press F2 and enter root credentials.
10. Select Configure Management Network, and press Enter.
11. Select the appropriate network adapter, and click OK.
12. Log into the server using the VMware vSphere client.
13. Select the Configuration tab, and click Networking.
14. Click Add Networking…
15. Create the management network on VLAN 102.
16. Click the Configuration tab, and select Time configuration.
17. Click DNS and Routing, and confirm the settings.
Setting up Windows Server® VMs
Create VMs for DC1, Infra-SQL, and vCenter for the infrastructure. The same procedure is used to create the test
VMs. See Figure 9 in Appendix C for configuration values.
1. Log into the ESX server with the VMware vSphere client.
2. In the VMware vSphere client, under Basic Tasks, select Create a new virtual machine.
3. Choose Custom, and click Next.
4. Assign a name to the virtual machine, and click Next.
5. Select the host, and click Next.
6. Select the appropriate storage, and click Next.
7. Choose Virtual Machine Version 8, and click Next.
8. Choose Windows®, select Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (64-bit), and click Next.
9. For CPUs, select the correct number of vCPUs based on the VM role, and click Next.
10. Choose the amount of memory based on the VM role, and click Next.
11. Click 1 for the number of NICs, select VMXNET3, connect to the PRIV-NET port group, and click Next.
12. Leave the default virtual storage controller, and click Next.
13. Keep the default virtual device node (0:0), and click Next.
14. Connect the VM virtual CD-ROM to the Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 installation disk.
15. Click Finish.
16. Right-click the vCenter VM, and click Edit settings.
11. A Principled Technologies report 11Using VMTurbo to boost performance
17. Start the VM.
Installing Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
1. Choose the language, time and currency, and keyboard input. Click Next.
2. Click Install Now.
3. Select Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter, and click Next.
4. Accept the license terms, and click Next.
5. Click Custom.
6. Click the Disk, and click Next.
7. After the installation completes, enter the administrator password twice, and click Finish.
Configuring the operating system
1. Enable remote desktop access.
2. Change the hostname, and reboot when the installer prompts you.
3. Set up networking:
a. Click StartControl Panel, right-click Network Connections, and select Open.
b. Right-click the management traffic NIC, and select Properties.
c. Select TCP/IP (v4), and select Properties.
d. Set the IP address and subnet for the NIC, which will handle management traffic, and click OK.
e. Click OK, and click Close.
4. Install all available Windows updates. Restart as necessary.
5. Once DC1 is configured as an Active Directory® server, join all other VMs to the AD before continuing.
Installing Active Directory and DNS services
1. Launch Server Manager.
2. Click ManageAdd Roles and Features.
3. At the Before you begin screen, click Next.
4. At the Select installation type screen, leave Role-based or feature-based installation selected, and click Next.
5. At the Server Selection Screen, select the server from the pool, and click Next.
6. At the Select Server Roles screen, select Active Directory Domain Services. Click Add Features when prompted,
and click Next.
7. At the Select Features screen, click Next.
8. At the Active Directory Domain Services screen, click Next.
9. At the Confirm installation selections screen, check Restart the destination server automatically if required, and
click Install.
Configuring Active Directory and DNS services
1. After the installation completes, a screen should pop up with configuration options. If not, click the Tasks flag in
the upper-right section of Server Manager.
2. Click Promote this server to a Domain Controller.
3. At the Deployment Configuration screen, select Add a new forest. In the Root domain name field, type
test.local and click Next.
12. A Principled Technologies report 12Using VMTurbo to boost performance
4. At the Domain Controller Options screen, leave the default values, and enter a password twice.
5. Click Next four times to accept default settings for DNS, NetBIOS, and directory paths.
6. At the Review Options screen, click Next.
7. At the Prerequisites Check dialog, allow the check to complete. If there are no relevant errors, check Restart the
destination server automatically if required, and click Install.
8. When the server restarts, log on using testAdministrator and the specified password.
Configuring the Windows Time Service on DC1
To ensure reliable time, we pointed our Active Directory server to a local NTP server.
1. Open a command prompt.
2. Type the following:
W32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual /manualpeerlist:"<ip address of a NTP
server>"
W32tm /config /reliable:yes
W32tm /config /update
W32tm /resync
Net stop w32time
Net start w32time
Installing and configuring Microsoft SQL Server 2014
1. Open the console for the VM or connect to the VM with RDP.
2. Mount the installation ISO to the VM.
3. Click to run SETUP.EXE. If Autoplay does not begin the installation, navigate to the SQL Server® 2014 DVD, and
double-click.
4. If the installer prompts you with a .NET installation prompt, click Yes to enable the .NET Framework Core role.
5. In the left pane, click Installation.
6. Click New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation.
7. At the Setup Support Rules screen, wait for the rule check to complete. If there are no failures or relevant
warnings, click OK.
8. Select Specify a free edition, and from the drop-down menu, select Evaluation. Click Next.
9. Click the checkbox to accept the license terms, and click Next.
10. If no failures are displayed after the setup support files are installed, click Next.
11. At the Setup Role screen, choose SQL Server Feature Installation.
12. At the Feature Selection screen, select Database Engine Services, Full-Text and Semantic Extractions for Search,
Client Tools Connectivity, Client Tools Backwards Compatibility, Management Tools – Basic, and Management
Tools – Complete. Click Next.
13. At the Installation Rules screen, after the check completes, click Next.
14. At the Instance configuration screen, leave the default selection of default instance, and click Next.
15. At the Disk Space Requirements screen, click Next.
16. At the Server Configuration screen, check that NT AUTHORITYSYSTEM is selected for SQL Server Agent and SQL
Server Database Engine. Click Next.
17. Assuming there are no failures, click Next.
13. A Principled Technologies report 13Using VMTurbo to boost performance
18. At the Database Engine Configuration screen, select Mixed Mode.
19. Enter and confirm a password for the system administrator account.
20. Click Add Current user. This may take several seconds.
21. Click the Data Directories tab, and select the default data locations and log locations.
22. Click Next.
23. At the Error and usage reporting screen, click Next.
24. At the Installation Configuration Rules screen, check that there are no failures or relevant warnings, and click
Next.
25. At the Ready to Install screen, click Install.
26. After installation completes, click Close.
27. Download and install any available updates for Microsoft SQL Server 2014.
Setting up an ODBC DSN on vCenter
1. Create new databases on Infra-SQL in Microsoft SQL Management Studio named vcenter and vupdate
2. Click Options, change the recovery model from full to simple on both databases, and click OK.
3. Log into vCenter as TESTadministrator
4. From the desktop of the vCenter server, select StartRun, and type odbcad32.exe. Press Enter.
5. Click the system DSN tab.
6. Click Add.
7. Click SQL Server Native Client 11.0, and click Finish.
8. In the Create a New Data Source to SQL Server text box, type the connection name vcenter
9. For Server, select SQL, and click Next.
10. Change authentication to With SQL Server authentication using a login ID and password entered by the user,
type sa as the Login ID, use the password you defined in SQL server setup for the SA account, and click Next.
11. Select Change the default database to choose vCenter from the pull-down menu, and click Next.
12. Click Finish.
13. To confirm correct configuration, click Test Data Source…
14. To create the vCenter ODBC connection, click OK.
15. Repeat the procedure to create a connection for the vupdate database.
Installing VMware vCenter 5.5
1. From the VMware vCenter 5.5 install media, click Autorun.
2. To start the install wizard, click Run.
3. Go through the Custom Install option, using the vCenter and database defined above, and install all four
components (Single Sign-On, Web Client, Inventory Service, and Server).
a. Select the Install wizard language as English, and click OK.
b. At the Install wizard welcome screen, click Next.
c. At the End User Patent Agreement, click Next.
d. Agree to the License Agreement, and click Next.
14. A Principled Technologies report 14Using VMTurbo to boost performance
e. Enter and confirm the password you wish to use with the Administrator account for vCenter Single Sign
On, and click Next.
f. Enter and confirm the passwords for the DBA and SQL user accounts, and click Next.
g. Confirm the Fully Qualified Domain Name or IP address is correct, and click Next.
h. Check the Use network service account checkbox, and click Next.
i. Accept the default installation path, and click Next.
j. Accept the default https port, and click Next.
k. Click Install.
l. After Single Sign On completes, and vCenter Server installation begins, enter user information and a
license key, and click Next.
m. Select Use an existing supported database, and select the Data Source Name (DSN) for the connection to
the SQL Server: vcenter
n. Type sa as the database username, provide the password for the SA account, and click Next.
o. Select the system account for the vCenter Server service account, and click Next.
p. Keep the vCenter default ports, and click Next.
q. Select 1024 MB for the JVM memory, and click Next.
r. To finish the vCenter server installation, click Install.
s. To exit the wizard, click Finish.
t. To confirm completion, click OK.
4. On the installer, click Exit.
5. Restart the server.
6. Using the vSphere client, log into the vCenter server as TESTadministrator
7. Right-click the root of vCenter, and click New Data center.
8. Name the new data center datacenter
9. Add the three ESX servers under test to the data center.
Installing Internet Information Services
1. Click StartAdministrative ToolsServer Manager.
2. On the left pane, click Roles.
3. Click Add Roles.
4. Click the Application Server checkbox.
5. When the Add features required for Web Server (IIS)? screen appears, click Add Features.
6. Select .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.5, and add ASP.NET 4.5.
7. Click Next.
8. Click Next.
9. At the Select Role Services page for Web Server (IIS), click Next.
10. Click Install.
11. Click Close.
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Configuring Internet Information Services
1. Copy the pre-configured ds2web folder containing the HTML and .cs files for the DS2 Web application to C:
2. Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
3. Expand the server tree, and disable the Default Web Site.
4. Add a Website named ds2
5. Set the Physical path to c:ds2web
6. Click OK.
7. Add a Virtual Directory, and point the virtual path /ds2 to the root application.
Configuring the database workload client
For our testing, we used a virtual client for the IIS/Microsoft SQL Server client. To create this client, we installed
Windows Server 2012 R2, assigned a static IP address, and installed .NET 4.5.
Configuring the database
Data generation overview
We generated the data using the Install.pl script included with DVD Store version 2.1 (DS2), providing the
parameters for our 4GB database size and the Microsoft SQL Server 2014 platform. We ran the Install.pl script on a
utility system running Linux®. The Install.pl script also generated the database schema.
After processing the data generation, we transferred the data files and schema creation files to a Windows-
based system running SQL Server 2012. We built the 4GB database in SQL Server 2012, and then performed a full
backup, storing the backup file on the C: drive for quick access. We used that backup file to restore the server between
test runs.
The only modification we made to the schema creation scripts were the specified file sizes for our database. We
explicitly set the file sizes higher than necessary to ensure that no file-growth activity would affect the outputs of the
test. Besides this file size modification, the database schema was created and loaded according to the DVD Store
documentation. Specifically, we followed the steps below:
1. We generated the data and created the database and file structure using database creation scripts in the DS2
download. We made size modifications specific to our 4GB database and the appropriate changes to drive
letters.
2. We transferred the files from our Linux data generation system to a Windows system running SQL Server.
3. We created database tables, stored procedures, and objects using the provided DVD Store scripts.
4. We set the database recovery model to bulk-logged to prevent excess logging.
5. We loaded the data we generated into the database. For data loading, we used the import wizard in SQL Server
Management Studio. Where necessary, we retained options from the original scripts, such as Enable Identity
Insert.
6. We created indices, full-text catalogs, primary keys, and foreign keys using the database-creation scripts.
7. We updated statistics on each table according to database-creation scripts, which sample 18 percent of the
table data.
8. On the SQL Server instance, we created a ds2user SQL Server login using the following Transact-SQL (T-SQL)
script:
16. A Principled Technologies report 16Using VMTurbo to boost performance
USE [master]
GO
CREATE LOGIN [ds2user] WITH PASSWORD=N’’,
DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master],
DEFAULT_LANGUAGE=[us_english],
CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF,
CHECK_POLICY=OFF
GO
9. We set the database recovery model back to full.
10. We created the necessary full text index using SQL Server Management Studio.
11. We created a database user and mapped this user to the SQL Server login.
12. We then performed a full backup of the database. This backup allowed us to restore the databases to a pristine
state relatively quickly between tests.
Figure 8 shows our initial file size modifications.
Logical name Filegroup Initial size (MB)
Database files
primary PRIMARY 4
cust1 DS_CUST_FG 2,048
cust2 DS_CUST_FG 2,048
ind1 DS_IND_FG 1,024
ind2 DS_IND_FG 1,024
ds_misc DS_MISC_FG 1,024
orders1 DS_ORDERS 1,024
orders2 DS_ORDERS 1,024
Log files
ds_log Not applicable 10,240
Figure 8: Our initial file size modifications.
Configuring VMTurbo
Installing VMTurbo
1. Install the appliance OVF using vCenter.
a. Select FileDeploy OVF Template.
b. Browse to the location of the OVA file.
c. Continue through the wizard, and accept the license agreement.
d. Name the new appliance VM.
e. Select the destination datastore, and choose the provision method.
f. Map the VM network to the test network.
g. Select Power on after deployment, and click Finish.
2. Open a console to the VMTurbo appliance.
3. Log into the appliance with the default ipsetup/ipsetup credentials.
4. Set the static IP address for the appliance.
5. Confirm the change.
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6. Log in as root/vmturbo
7. Execute yast timezone and set the correct time zone and system time.
8. Connect to the IP address via Web browser.
9. Log in as administrator/administrator
10. Install the VMTurbo license.
11. Navigate to AdminUser Configuration.
12. Enter the Active Directory Domain and Server information, and click Apply.
13. Navigate to AdminMaintenance.
14. Select Check for software updates, and apply any available updates.
Configuring Admin
1. Navigate to AdminTarget Configuration.
2. Select Add, and select Hypervisor.
3. Enter the host name/IP address and authentication credentials for the vCenter.
4. Allow at least 15 minutes for the VMTurbo appliance to discover the infrastructure.
Configuring Policy
1. Under ActionVMVirtual Machines by PM cluster, enable the override for Move, and set the value to
Automated.
2. Under ActionHostPhysical Machines by PM cluster[Cluster name], enable the override for Suspend, and
change the value to Disabled.
3. Under DiscoveryApplication Discovery, ensure that the MSSQL and IIS boxes are checked. For IIS, append
|w3wp.* to the match statement. Click Apply Settings Change.
4. Under DiscoveryApplication DiscoveryApplication CredentialsVirtual Machines, override the Username
and Password attributes, and enter the domain administrator authentication credentials.
5. Under AnalysisResize Recommendation Incrementing Constants, change the Rate of Resize from Medium to
High.
Running the test
Test start and run times
We ran all workloads concurrently in order to start and record all performance counters for this report. The
specific testing parameters we used for each benchmark are included in the setup sections, and we describe specifics for
launching these tests below.
About running the DVD Store tests
We created a series of batch files, SQL scripts, and shell scripts to automate the complete test cycle. DVD Store
outputs an orders-per-minute metric, which is a running average calculated through the test. In this report, we report
the last OPM reported by each client/target pair.
Each complete test cycle consisted of the general steps listed below.
1. Reboot the ESX hosts.
2. Clean up prior outputs from the target system and the client driver system.
3. Drop the database from the target.
4. Restore the database on the target.
5. Wait for a ping response from the server under test (the hypervisor system), the client system, and the target.
18. A Principled Technologies report 18Using VMTurbo to boost performance
6. Let the test server idle for 5 minutes.
7. Start the DVD Store driver on the client.
8. We used the following DVD Store parameters for testing:
ds2webdriver.exe --target=<target_IP> --ramp_rate=10 --run_time=60 --
n_threads=32 --db_size=4GB --think_time=0.05 --detailed_view=Y --
warmup_time=1 --report_rate=1 --csv_output=<drive path>
9. Monitor the VMTurbo console for recommended changes and make note of recommendations.
10. Once the 60-minute testing cycle completes, collect the performance data and reset the environment, per step 2
above.
11. Implement all recommendations given by VMTurbo during the first test.
12. Begin a second test run, repeating steps 3 through 8, this time implementing any non-disruptive VMTurbo
recommendations during the test run (e.g., host migrations).
13. Collect the performance data, implement any disruptive recommendations, and reset the environment.
14. Perform a third test run, implement non-disruptive VMTurbo recommendations, and collect the performance
data.
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APPENDIX C – DETAILED VIRTUAL MACHINE CONFIGURATION
Figure 9 shows the detailed information of the virtual machines we used in testing before implementing
VMTurbo recommendations.
VM name Qty OS Host(s) LUN vCPUs
Mem
(GB)
vDisk (GB)
SQL Server 2014
(Active)
4
Windows
2012 R2
Host 1 Fibre Channel 16 8 80
SQL Server 2014
(Idle)
3
Windows
2012 R2
Host 1 NFS NAS 8 8 20
IIS 8 Web Server 4
Windows
2012 R2
Host 1 NFS NAS 16 8 80
SQL Server 2014
(Active)
4
Windows
2012 R2
Host 2 Fibre Channel 16 8 80
SQL Server 2014
(Idle)
3
Windows
2012 R2
Host 2 NFS NAS 8 8 20
IIS 8 Web Server 4
Windows
2012 R2
Host 2 NFS NAS 16 8 80
SQL Server 2014
(Active)
4
Windows
2012 R2
Host 3 Fibre Channel 16 8 80
SQL Server 2014
(Idle)
3
Windows
2012 R2
Host 3 NFS NAS 8 8 20
IIS 8 Web Server 4
Windows
2012 R2
Host 3 NFS NAS 16 8 80
Figure 9: Detailed information for our virtual machines.
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ABOUT PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES
Principled Technologies, Inc.
1007 Slater Road, Suite 300
Durham, NC, 27703
www.principledtechnologies.com
We provide industry-leading technology assessment and fact-based
marketing services. We bring to every assignment extensive experience
with and expertise in all aspects of technology testing and analysis, from
researching new technologies, to developing new methodologies, to
testing with existing and new tools.
When the assessment is complete, we know how to present the results to
a broad range of target audiences. We provide our clients with the
materials they need, from market-focused data to use in their own
collateral to custom sales aids, such as test reports, performance
assessments, and white papers. Every document reflects the results of
our trusted independent analysis.
We provide customized services that focus on our clients’ individual
requirements. Whether the technology involves hardware, software, Web
sites, or services, we offer the experience, expertise, and tools to help our
clients assess how it will fare against its competition, its performance, its
market readiness, and its quality and reliability.
Our founders, Mark L. Van Name and Bill Catchings, have worked
together in technology assessment for over 20 years. As journalists, they
published over a thousand articles on a wide array of technology subjects.
They created and led the Ziff-Davis Benchmark Operation, which
developed such industry-standard benchmarks as Ziff Davis Media’s
Winstone and WebBench. They founded and led eTesting Labs, and after
the acquisition of that company by Lionbridge Technologies were the
head and CTO of VeriTest.
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