whats new vmware vsphere 50 performance technical whitepaper

7/31/2019 Whats New VMware vSphere 50 Performance Technical Whitepaper

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Whats New in Performancein VMware vSphere 5.0T E C H N I C A L W H I T E P A P E R


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T E C H N I C A L W H I T E P A P E R / 2

Whats New in Performance inVMware vSphere 5.0

IntroductionVMware vSphere 5.0 (vSphere), the best VMware solution or building cloud inrastructures, pushes urther

ahead in perormance and scalability. vSphere 5.0 enables higher consolidation ratios with unequaledperormance. It supports the build-out o private and hybrid clouds at even lower operational costs than beore.

The ollowing are some o the perormance highlights:

VMware vCenter Server scalability

Fasterhigh-availability(HA)congurationtimes

Fasterfailoverrates60%morevirtualmachineswithinthesametime

Lowermanagementoperationallatencies

Highermanagementoperationsthroughput(Ops/min)

Compute

32-wayvCPUscalability

1TBmemorysupport

Storage

vSphereStorageI/OControl(StorageI/OControl)nowsupportsNFSSetstoragequalityofservice

priorities per virtual machine or better access to storage resources or high-priority applications

Network

vSphereNetworkI/OControl(NetworkI/OControl)Givesahighergranularityofnetworkloadbalancing

vSphere vMotion

vSpherevMotion(vMotion)MultinetworkadaptorenablementthatcontributestoanevenfastervMotion

vSphereStoragevMotion(StoragevMotion)Fast,livestoragemigrationwithI/Omirroring

VMware vCenter Server and ScalabilityEnhancements

Virtual Machines per Cluster

Even with the increased number o supported virtual machines per cluster, vSphere 5.0 delivers a higher

throughput(Ops/min)ofmanagementoperationsupto120%,dependingontheintensityoftheoperations.

Examples o management operations include virtual machine power-on, virtual machine power-o, virtual

machinemigrate,virtualmachineregister,virtualmachineunregister,createfolder,andsoon.Operationlatency

improvementsrangefrom25%to75%,dependingonthetypeofoperationandthebackgroundload.

HA (High Availability)

SignicantadvanceshavebeenmadeinvSphere5.0toreducecongurationtimeandimprovefailoverperformance.A32-host,3,200virtualmachine,HA-enabledclustercanbecongured9xfasterinvSphere5.0.

Inthesameamountoftimeaswithpreviouseditions,vSphere5.0canfailover60%morevirtualmachines.The

minimalrecoverytime,fromfailuretotherstvirtualmachinerestarts,hasbeenimprovedby44.4%.The

averagevirtualmachinefailovertimehasimprovedby14%.

Inaddition,invSphere5.0,thedefaultCPUslotsizethatis,spareCPUcapacityreservedforeachHA-protected

virtualmachineissmallerincomparisontoitsvalueinvSphere4.1,toenableahigherconsolidationratio.Asa

result,DistributedPowerManagement(DPM)mightbeabletoputmorehostsintostandbymodewhenthe

clusterutilizationislow,leadingtomorepowersavings.


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VMware ESX VMware ESX VMware ESXi

VM VM

Resource Pool

Failed ServerOperating Server Operating Server

VMVM VMVM

Figure 1. vSphere 5.0 High Availability

CPU Enhancements

32-vCPU performance and scalability

VMwarevSphere5.0cannowsupportupto32vCPUs.UsingalargenumberofvCPUsinavirtualmachinecan

potentiallyhelplargescale,missioncritical,Tier1applicationsachievehigherperformanceandthroughput

and/orfasterruntimeforcertainapplications.

TheVMwarePerformanceEngineeringlabconductedavarietyofexperiments,includingcommercialTier1and

HPC(high-performancecomputing)applications.Performancewasobservedclosetonative,9297%,as

virtualizedapplicationsscaledto32vCPUs.

Intel SMTrelated CPU scheduler enhancements

IntelSMTarchitectureexposestwohardwarecontextsfromasinglecore.Thebenetofutilizingtwohardware

contextsrangesfrom10%to30%inimprovedapplicationperformance,dependingontheworkloads.InvSphere

5.0,theVMwareESXiCPUschedulerspolicyistunedforthistypeofarchitecturetobalancebetweenmaximum

throughputandfairnessbetweenvirtualmachines.Inadditiontothenumberofperformanceoptimizations

madearoundSMTCPUschedulinginvSphere4.1(runningtheVMwareESXihypervisorarchitecture),wehave

urther enhanced the SMT scheduler in VMware ESXi 5.0 to ensure high efciency and perormance or

mission-critical applications.

Virtual NUMA (vNUMA)

VirtualNUMA(vNUMA)exposeshostNUMAtopologytotheguestoperatingsystem,enablingNUMA-aware

guestoperatingsystemsandapplicationstomakethemostecientuseoftheunderlyinghardwaresNUMA

architecture.

VirtualNUMA,whichrequiresvirtualhardwareversion8,canprovidesignicantperformancebenetsfor

virtualizedoperatingsystemsandapplicationsthatfeatureNUMAoptimization.


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Storage Enhancements

NFS support for Storage I/O ControlvSphere5.0StorageI/OControlnowsupportsNFSandnetwork-attachedstorage(NAS)basedshareson

shareddatastores.ItnowprovidesthefollowingbenetsforNFS:

DynamicallyregulatesmultiplevirtualmachinesaccesstosharedI/Oresources,basedondisksharesassigned

to the virtual machines.

Helpsisolateperformanceoflatency-sensitiveapplicationsthatemploysmaller(


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Memory Management Enhancements

1TB vMem supportInvSphere5.0,virtualmachinescannowsupportvMemupto1TB.Withthenew1TBvMemsupport,Tier1

applicationsconsuminglargeamountsofmemory(>255GB),suchasin-memorydatabases,cannowbe

virtualized.Experimentalmeasurementswithmemoryintensiveworkloadsforvirtualmachineswithupto

1TBvMemdemonstratesimilarperformancewhencomparedtoidenticalphysicalcongurations.

SSD Swap Cache

vSphere5.0canbeconguredtoenableVMwareESXihostswappingtoasolid-statedisk(SSD).Inthelowhost

memoryavailablestates(highmemoryusage),whereguestballooning,transparentpagesharing(TPS)and

memory compression have not been sufcient to reclaim the needed host memory, hypervisor swapping is used

as the last resort to reclaim memory rom the virtual machines. vSphere employs three methods to address

limitations o hypervisor swapping to improve hypervisor swapping perormance:

Randomlyselectingthevirtualmachinephysicalpagestobeswappedout.ThishelpsmitigatetheimpactofVMwareESXipathologicallyinteractingwiththeguestoperatingsystemsmemorymanagementheuristics.

This has been enabled rom early releases o VMware ESX.

MemorycompressionofthevirtualmachinepagesthataretargetedbyVMwareESXitobeswappedout.This

feature,introducedinvSphere4.1,reducesthenumberofmemorypagesthatmustbeswappedouttothedisk,

whilereclaiminghostmemoryeectivelyatthesametimeandtherebybenetingapplicationperformance.

vSphere5.0nowenablesuserstochoosetocongureaswapcacheontheSSD.VMwareESXi5.0willthenuse

this swap cache to store the swapped-out pages instead o sending them to the regular and slower hypervisor

swapleonthedisk.Uponthenextaccesstoapageintheswapcache,thepagewillberetrievedquicklyfrom

thecacheandthenremovedfromtheswapcachetofreeupspace.BecauseSSDreadlatenciesareanorderof

magnitudefasterthantypicaldiskaccesslatencies,thissignicantlyreducestheswap-inlatenciesandgreatly

improves the application perormance in high memory over commitment scenarios.

SSD Swap Cache

Flash

Page Table

0

1

1

0

1

0

0

1

Main Memory

Figure 3. SSD Swap Cache


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Network Enhancements

Network I/O ControlNetworkI/OControl(NIOC)enablestheallocationofnetworkbandwidthtoresourcepools.InvSphere5.0,userscan

createnewresourcepoolstoassociatewithportgroupsandspecify802.1ptags,whereasinvSphere4.1,only

predenedresourcepoolscouldbeusedforbandwidthallocation.Sodierentvirtualmachinescannowbein

dierentresourcepoolsandbegivenahigherorlowershareofbandwidththantheothers.Thepredenedresource

groupsincludevMotion,NFS,iSCSI,vSphereFaultTolerance(FaultTolerance),virtualmachine,andmanagement.

splitRxMode

vSphere5.0introducesanewwayofdoingnetworkpacketreceiveprocessingintheVMkernel.Inprevious

releasesofvSphere,allreceivepacketprocessingforanetworkqueuewasdoneinasinglecontext,whichmight

be shared among various virtual machines. In cases where there is a higher density o virtual machines per

networkqueue,itispossibleforthecontexttobecomeresourceconstrained.Multicastisonesuchworkload

wheremultiplereceivervirtualmachinesshareonenetworkqueue.vSphere5.0includesanewmechanismtosplitthecostofreceivepacketprocessingtomultiplecontexts.SplitRxModecanspecifyforeachvirtual

machinewhetherreceivepacketprocessingshouldbeinthenetworkqueuecontextoraseparatecontext.

WecalledthismodesplitRxMode,anditcanbeenabledonaper-vNICbasisbyeditingtheVMXleofthevirtual

machinewithethernetX.emuRxMode=1fortheEthernetdevice.

NOTE: This confguration is available only with vmxnet3. Once the option is enabled, the packet processing or

the virtual machine is handled by a separate context. This improves the multicast perormance signifcantly.

However, there is an overhead associated with splitting the cost among various PCPUs. This cost can be

attributed to higher CPU utilization per packet processed, so VMware recommends enabling this option or only

those workloads, such as multicast, that are known to beneft rom this eature.

VMware perormance labs conducted a perormance study or multiple receivers with the sender transmitting

multicastpacketsat16,000packetspersecond.Aseachadditionalreceiverwasadded,therewasanincrease

inpacketshandledbythenetworkingcontext.Aftertheloadofthecontextreacheditsmaximum,thereweresignicantpacketlosses.ByenablingsplitRxModeonthesevirtualmachines,theloadonthecontextwas

decreasedandtherebyincreasingthenumberofmulticastreceivershandledwithoutsignicantdrops.Figure4

showsthatthereisnonoticeabledierenceinlossrateforthesetupuntilthereare24virtualmachinespowered

on.Aftertherearemorethan24virtualmachinespoweredon,thereisanalmost1025%packetloss.Enabling

splitRxModeforthevirtualmachinesreducesthelossratetolessthan0.01%.

Multicast Performance

Default

splitRxMode

PercentPack

etLoss

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

1 2 4 8 12 16 24 28 32

Number of Receivers

Figure 4. Multicast Perormance


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vSphere DirectPath I/O

vSphereDirectPathI/O(DirectPathI/O)enablesguestoperatingsystemstodirectlyaccessnetworkdevices.

DirectPathI/OforvSphere5.0hasbeenenhancedtoallowthevMotionofavirtualmachinecontaining

DirectPathI/OnetworkadaptorsontheCiscoUniedComputingSystem(UCS)platform.Onsuchplatforms,with proper setup and ports available or passthrough, vSphere 5.0 can transition the device rom one that is

paravirtualizedtoonethatisdirectlyaccessed,andtheotherwayaround.Whilebothmodescansustainhigh

throughput(beyond10Gbps),directaccesscanadditionallysaveCPUcyclesinworkloadswithhighpacketrates

(forexample,approximatelygreaterthan50kps).

BecauseDirectPathI/OdoesnotsupportsomevSpherefeaturesmemoryovercommitmentandNIOC

VMwarerecommendsusingDirectPathI/Oonlyforworkloadswithveryhighpacketrates,wheresavingCPU

cycles can be critical to achieving the desired perormance.

Host Power Management Enhancements

VMwareHostPowerManagement(VMwareHPM)invSphere5.0providespowersavingsworkingatthehostlevel.WithvSphere5.0,thedefaultpowermanagementpolicyisbalanced.Thebalancedpolicyusesan

algorithmthatexploitsaprocessorsP-states.WorkloadsoperatingunderlowCPUloadscanexpecttosee

somepowersavings(dependingentirelyontheworkloadCPUusagecharacteristics)withminimalperformance

loss(dependentonapplicationCPUusagecharacteristics).VMwarestronglyadvisesperformance-sensitive

userstoconductcontrolledexperimentstoobservethepowersavings/performanceoftheirapplicationwith

vSphere 5.0. I the perormance loss is unacceptable, switch VMware ESX to the high perormance mode. Most

oftheworkloadsoperatingunderlowloadscanseeupto5%inpowersavingswhenusingbalancedmode.


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VMware vMotion

Multinetwork adaptor enablement for vMotionThenewperformanceenhancementsinvSphere5.0enablevMotiontoeectivelysaturatea10GbEnetwork

adaptorbandwidthduringthemigration,signicantlyreducingvMotiontransfertimes.Inaddition,VMwareESX

5.0addsamulti-networkadaptorfeaturethatenablesuserstoemploymultiplenetworkadaptorsforvMotion.

TheVMkernelwilltransparentlyload-balancethevMotiontracoverallthevMotion-enabledvmknicsinan

eorttosaturatealloftheconnections.Infact,evenwhenthereisasinglevMotion,VMkernelusesallthe

availablenetworkadaptorstospreadthevMotiontrac.

Figure5summarizesthevMotionperformanceenhancementsinvSphere5.0overvSphere4.1.Thetest

environmentmodeledbothasingle-instanceSQLservervirtualmachine(virtualmachineconguredwithfour

vCPUsand16GBmemoryandrunningOLTPworkload)andmultiple-instanceSQLservervirtualmachine(each

virtualmachineconguredwithfourvCPUsand16GBmemoryandrunningOLTPworkload)deployment

scenariosforthefollowingcongurations:

vSphere SourceDestination hosts congured with a single GbE port for vMotion

vSphere SourceDestination hosts congured with a single GbE port for vMotion

vSphere SourceDestination hosts congured with two GbE ports for vMotion

vSphere 4.1

vSphere 5

vSphere 5 (2 NICs)

1 Virtual Machine

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

2 Virtual Machines

Timein

seconds

Figure 5. vMotion Perormance in vSphere 4.1 and vSphere 5.0

ThegureclearlyshowstheenhancementsmadeinvSphere5.0toreducethetotalelapsedtimeinboth

singlevirtualmachineandmultiple-instanceSQLservervirtualmachinedeploymentscenarios.TheaveragepercentagedropinvMotiontransfertimewasalittleover30%invSphere5.0whenusingasingle10GbE

networkadaptor.Whenusingtwo10GbEnetworkadaptorsforvMotion(enabledbythenewmultinetwork

adaptorfeatureinvSphere5.0),thetotalmigrationtimereduceddramatically:afactorof2.3ximprovement

overthevSphere4.1result.Thegurealsoillustratesthefactthatthemultinetworkadaptorfeature

transparentlyloadbalancesthevMotiontracontomultiplenetworkadaptors,eveninthecasewhereasingle

virtual machine is subjected to vMotion. This eature can be especially handy when a virtual machine is

conguredwithalargeamountofmemory.


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Metro vMotion

vSphere 5.0 introduces a new latency-aware Metro vMotion eature that provides better perormance over

longlatencynetworksandalsoincreasestheround-triplatencylimitforvMotionnetworksfrom5milliseconds

to10milliseconds.Previously,vMotionwassupportedonlyonnetworkswithround-triplatenciesofupto5 milliseconds.

VMware Storage vMotion (Live Migration) Enhancements

vSphere5.0nowsupportslivemigrationforstoragewiththeuseofI/Omirroring.Inpreviousreleases,live

migration moved memory and device state only or a virtual machine, limiting migration to hosts with identical

sharedstorage.Livestoragemigrationovercomesthislimitationbyenablingthemovementofvirtualdisks

spanningvolumesanddistance.Thisenablesgreatervirtualmachinemobility,zerodowntimemaintenanceand

upgrades o storage elements, and automatic storage load balancing.

VMwarehasbeenabletogreatlyreducethetimeittakesforthestoragetomigrate,startingwiththeuseof

snapshotsinVirtualInfrastructure3.5,movingtousingdirtyblocktrackinginvSphere4.0,andnowtousingI/O

mirroring in vSphere 5.0.

Livestoragemigrationhasthefollowingadvantages.

Zerodowntimemaintenance Enables customers to move virtual machines on and o storage volumes,

upgradestoragearrays,performlesystemupgrades,andservicehardwarewithoutpoweringdown

virtual machines.

Manualandautomaticstorageloadbalancing Customerscancontinuetomanuallyload-balancetheir

vSphereclusterstoimprovestorageperformance,ortheycantakeadvantageofautomaticstorageload

balancing(vSphereStorageDRS),whichisnowavailableinvSphere5.0.

Livestoragemigrationincreasesvirtualmachinemobility Virtual machines are no longer pinned to the

storagearraytheyareinstantiatedon.Livemigrationworksbycopyingthememoryanddevicestateofa

virtual machine rom one host to another with negligible virtual machine downtime.

VMware ESXi & ESX

VM VM VMVM

Storage vMotion

Figure 6. vSphere 5.0 Storage vMotion


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T E C H N I C A L W H I T E P A P E R / 1 0


Tier 1 Application Performance

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010MicrosoftExchangeServer2010signicantlybenetsfromthesuperiorperformanceandscalabilityprovidedby

vSphere5.0.MicrosoftExchangeLoadGenerator2010benchmarkresultsindicatethatvSphere5.0improves

Microsot Exchange transaction response times and vMotion and Storage vMotion migration times when

compared with the previous vSphere release.

ThefollowingareexamplesofperformanceandscalabilitygainsobservedincomparisontovSphere4.1:

6%reductioninSendMail95thpercentiletransactionlatencieswithafour-vCPUExchangeMailBoxserver

virtual machine

13%reductioninSendMail95thpercentiletransactionlatencieswithaneight-vCPUExchangeMailBoxserver

virtual machine

33%reductioninvMotionmigrationtimeforafour-vCPUExchangeMailBoxservervirtualmachine

11%reductioninStoragevMotionmigrationtimefora350GBExchangedatabaseVMDK

ZimbraMailServerPerformance

Thefull-featured,robustandopen-sourceZimbraCollaborationSuite(ZCS)includesemail,calendaring,and

collaboration sotware. Zimbra is an important part o the VMware cloud computing portolio, as sotware as a

service(SaaS)andasaprepackagedvirtualapplianceforSMBs.

ForvSphere5.0,virtualizedZCSperformswithin95%ofnativeperformancevirtualmachine,scalinguptoeight

vCPUs.Uptoeight4-vCPUZCSvirtualmachinessupporting32,000mailuserswerescaledoutonasinglehost

withjusta10%increaseinSendmaillatenciescomparedtoasinglevirtualmachine.

Inrecent4-vCPUexperiments,ZCShaslessthanhalftheCPUconsumptionofExchange2010withthesame

numberofusers,andmailuserprovisiontimeforZCSwas10xfaster.

Zimbra MTA+LDAP/Exchange 2010 CAS+HUB

Zimbra Database/Exchange 2010 Indexing

Mailbox

%C

PUUtilization

60

50

40

30

20

10

0Zimbra Mailbox Server Exchange 2010

Figure 7. Zimbra CPU Efciency over Exchange 2010


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VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.com

Copyright 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at

http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be

trademarks of their respective companies Item No: VMW-WP-PERFORMANCE-USLET-101

SummaryVMware innovations continue to ensure that VMware vSphere 5.0 pushes the envelope o perormance and

scalability.ThenumerousperformanceenhancementsinvSphere5.0enableorganizationstogetevenmoreoutoftheirvirtualinfrastructureandfurtherreinforcetheroleofVMwareasindustryleaderinvirtualization.

vSphere 5.0 represents advances in perormance, to ensure that even the most resource-intensive applications,

such as large databases and Microsot Exchange email systems, can run on private, hybrid and public clouds

powered by vSphere.

References (www.vmware.com)Understanding Memory Resource Management in VMware vSphere 5

Managing Performance Variance of Applications Using Storage I/O Control in VMware vSphere 5

Performance Best Practices Guide for VMware vSphere 5

Zimbra Mail Performance on VMware vSphere 5

Host Power Management in VMware vSphere 5
http://www.vmware.com/http://www.vmware.com/

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