EMC/VMware Performance Toolkit

Thanks to all who attended the webcast the past Thursday regarding performance diagnosis/resolution tools and techniques.   Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. 

NOTE + HEADS UP – this thursday’s (April 7th)  session (vSphere Security best practices) is going to be killer – Erin Banks rocks.   April is “Best Practice” webcast month – so the following weeks we’ll be covering backup (14th), EMC Unified storage (21st), and EMC VMAX (28th) best-practices. Register here.

So – the performance webcast covered:

• Good approaches to resolving performance issues.
• Key “must have” tools
• HOWTO use them the most effectively.

In the “must have” tools section, we talked about not only esxtop/resxtop, vscsistats, vcenter reports and EMC array tools but… more importantly – we demonstrated simple, easy powershell tools that help you use these across clusters, to correlate and analyze this data – to get to answers.

This stuff is all provided FOR FREE.   Use it.

The session was recorded, and you can get the recording below (click on the below to watch).

The powerpoint used is also shared in PPT format (for max leverage and reusability).  Of course this means that EMC competitors will use it (I see this all the time – argh – note there is an “EMC copyright” logo in the slide deck), but it’s a small price to pay for the gain for the overall community.

I also REALLY want to highlight Clint Kitson’s powershell work here (thanks Clint – you rock) and also directly link to the “key resources” I mentioned.   As is always the case – the “know where to go for what you don’t know” is often as important as the “what you know”.

“Essentials”

• “vSphere Resource Mangement Guide” (esxtop manual): http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r41/vsp_41_resource_mgmt.pdf
• “Interpreting esxtop Statistics”: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9279
• “Using vscsiStats for Storage Performance Analysis” (Drummonds): http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10095
• “vscsiStats: Fast and Easy Disk Workload Characterization on VMware ESX Server” (Irfan): http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10084

Powershell Toolkits (Kitson)

• ESXtop: https://community.emc.com/thread/117380?tstart=0
• vSCSIstats: https://community.emc.com/thread/116672?tstart=0
• EMC Array: https://community.emc.com/thread/116393?tstart=0
• Monitor (“munge it all together and graph”): https://community.emc.com/message/536505#536505

Performance “places to see”:

• VMware’s Performance Technology Pages http://vmware.com/technical-resources/performance
• VMware’s Performance Blog http://blogs.vmware.com/performance
• Performance Community http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/general/performance
• Irfan’s blog http://virtualscoop.org

Performance “people to follow”:

• @VMwareStorage
• @virtualirfan
• @clintonskitson

Comments

[Eyal]

Brilliant post and an excellent webcast.
Very useful content, will share with customers.
Kudos Chad and thanks for sharing.

[iwan 'e1' Rahabok]

Thanks for sharing in editable format. It shows both confidence and openness.

Can't wait to see the VNX in Singapore!

Cheers!
e1

[Federico]

Hi! Thanks for share it. I want to download it but it ask user and pass. I neet to register first?

Thanks.

[Barun]

Hi,

Is this still available for public consumption. I am designing a new EMC environment with Vmware and was looking for best practices. The session links seems to be broken and the file needs a username/password. How do I get the access?

Thanks