• As has been stated on multiple occasions and by multiple people, be sure that virtual machine disk/application partitions have been properly aligned. We recommend a 1MB boundary. Note that Windows Server 2008 aligns at a 1MB boundary automatically.
• Use a block size of 8KB unless other recommended or required by the application vendor. Note that the default NTFS block size is 4KB.
• Turn on the uncached write mechanism for NFS file systems used as VMware datastores. This can have a significant performance improvement for VMDKs on NFS but isn’t the default setting. From the Control Station, you can use this command to turn on the uncached write mechanism:
  server_mount <data mover name> -option <options>,uncached <file system name> <mount point>
  Be sure to review pages 99 through 101 of the VMware on Celerra best practices document for more information on the uncached write mechanism and any considerations for its use.
• Change the VMware ESX settings NFS.SendBufferSize andNFS.ReadBufferSize to a value that is a multiple of 32. The recommended value is 64. See page 73 of the best practices document for more details.
• If you’ve adjusted the NFS.MaxVolumes parameter in order to have access to more than 8 NFS datastores, you should also adjust NFS.TcpIpHeapSizeand NFS.TcpIpHeapMax parameters. The increase should be proportional; if you increase the maximum volumes to 32 (a common configuration), then you should increase the other parameters by a factor of 4 as well. Page 73 of the best practices document covers this. This VMware KB article andthis VMware KB article also have more information.
• Although not directly related to performance, best practices call for settingNFS.HeartbeatFrequency (or NFS.HeartbeatDelta in VMware vSphere) to 12, NFS.HeartbeatTimeout to 5, and NFS.HeartbeatMaxFailures to 10.
• Ensure that the LUNs backing the NFS file systems are allocated to the clar_r5_performance pool. This configuration will balance the load across the SPs, LUNs, etc., and help improve performance.

For more information visit http://www.hyper9.com/ I will also be posting a tutorial shortly.

Imagine being able to minimize your backup times by 90 percent. Most large organizations have tight backup windows and even their enterprise level backup solution cant keep up with the day to day business processes. Imagine being able to run a daily full backup instead of a weekly full and daily incrementals or differentials.

Well that dream is a reality with EMC””s Avamar. I””ve seen it, and I do it every week in different companies all the time. Avamar is a unique backup solution that allows for accelerated VMware backup and restore performance and efficiency. By filtering out redundant data segments through its global source-based deduplication, Avamar pushes up to a 200 percent reduction in the amount of data that has to be moved through your virtual infrastructure. Allowing you to replace your weekly fulls and daily incrementals with daily fulls. Which also allows for a faster recovery time.

I””m mostly writing this in my own amazement of how Avamar has changed my opinion on how data should be backed up but also to help you in reducing backup windows and time to recovery. I””ll post more tips and tricks in later posts. If you would like some immediate help contact me on linkedin.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/robsteele

This demo drives a heavy, mixed workload for an eight-hour day and shows metered power usage throughout. The workload used was VMmark and the total power savings were over 55%!