Deployment Guide 23
• Tradeoffs between memory and CPU resources:
• If VMs are CPU-bound and RAM is under-utilized, then turn off
page sharing. You can achieve this from the ESX Server
Management User Interface (MUI):
• Choose
Options
tab.
• Next, click on
Advanced Settings.
•Set
Mem.ShareScanTotal
to
0
. (The default is 200.)
• If VM peak memory is bursty, then decrease idle memory tax rate.
From ESX MUI:
• Choose
Options
tab.
• Next, click on
Advanced Settings.
•Set
Mem.IdleTax
to the rate of your choice. (The default
is75%.)
• VMware performance metrics can be accessed by exploring the
directory structure at /proc/vmware within the Service Console.
• For better backup practices, it is recommended to create two virtual
disks for each virtual machine: one virtual disk containing
OS/application installation files and the other virtual disk containing
user data. This allows for more frequent backup of the data virtual disk.
• Identify the limited resource by application type:
Table 1-6. Limiting Resources by Application Type
Limiting Resource Likely Application Type
RAM Web Server, Application
Server, File Server
CPU Application Server,
Streaming Server
Network File Server
Disk SAN Database, data-
intensive Application
Server
X6320bk0.book Page 23 Friday, August 27, 2004 1:35 PM