Knowledge
- Understand the DRS slot-size algorithm and its impact on migration recommendations
- Identify tools needed for monitoring capacity planning
- Identify performance metrics related to resource contention and saturation
Skills and Abilities
- Predict when additional ESX/ESXi Host, network or storage resources will be required by observing an existing environment
- Determine when to expand or contract provisioned Virtual Machine resources based upon observed Virtual Machine utilization
- Interpret performance metrics from vCenter to properly size the environment
Tools
- vSphere Resource Management Guide
- Overview Performance Charts Help
- Product Documentation
- vSphere Client
Notes
Predict when additional ESX/ESXi Host, network or storage resources will be required by observing an existing environment
Properly planning for capacity can help avoid this, but sometimes you just outgrow your environment. vCenter now has many more charts and resources that will give you a visual representation of performance and other metrics. Using these metrics you can see where you are at today and the trends on utilization, targeting the need to increase storage, network, or host requirements for your environment.
Determine when to expand or contract provisioned Virtual Machine resources based upon observed Virtual Machine utilization
After you have provisioned a virtual machine you may find it is not performing as well. The first question to ask is if this virtual machine has lesser resources then its physical counterpart did before. If so you will want to increase the CPU, memory, or storage requirements to get closer towards the original configuration.
Often times though the physical host will be way more powerful than the virtual machine needs to be. Giving a virtual machine more than enough resources will ensure it runs smoothly, but it will also waste expensive resources and prevent or hinder those resources from being utilized by other virtual machines. One big an mid-sized virtual machine with any customization to the slot size settings can heavily affect the slot size of your environment.
Refer to the other sections for VCAP-DCA troubleshooting to go through ESXTOP and other performance monitoring metrics.
Interpret performance metrics from vCenter to properly size the environment
Depending on your experience level it may not be completely straight forward what you are looking for here. Checkout this document from VMware to gain a better understanding of performance charts in vCenter and what you are looking for.