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.