Fine-tune your virtualization performance management skills

Introduction

There are many benefits to virtualization, but a key aspect of fully realizing those benefits is ensuring that everything in your data center is performing well. The virtual infrastructure is a complex system made up of many parts -- the hypervisor, VMs, servers, storage, applications -- and if even one of those parts isn't firing on all cylinders, it affects the rest of the infrastructure. As such, it's essential to not only understand what affects virtualization performance, but also how to actively improve performance and successfully troubleshoot any issues.

With this guide, you'll be better equipped to anticipate and prevent virtualization performance problems. Below, you'll find information on how CPU and memory affect performance, how you can benefit from VM performance benchmarking and how to pinpoint application performance problems in a virtual data center.

1Evaluate-

What factors can affect virtualization performance?

Before you can take steps to improve performance in your virtual environment, you need to understand what elements affect performance in the first place. In this section, learn how different variables affect hypervisor and VM performance, with tips on testing and configuration.

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How do Hyper-V Integration Components affect performance?

What are Hyper-V Integration Components, and are there any recommendations for boosting virtual machine performance? Continue Reading

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How can testing improve nested hypervisor performance?

Not all hypervisors and OSes can play nice with others. The best method for avoiding complications down the road is to thoroughly test your nested virtualization deployment. Continue Reading

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How much do server configurations affect hypervisor performance?

Software plays an important role in virtual infrastructure performance, but can you optimize performance by tweaking server configurations? Continue Reading

Tip

How CPU and memory affect application performance

Application performance will change depending on if you want more cores, better clock speed or what you choose for memory. Continue Reading

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How does antimalware software affect VM performance?

It's important to keep your infrastructure secure, but running antimalware software on your VMs can hurt performance. Continue Reading

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How bad do swap files affect virtual machine performance?

Modern technology can prevent VMs from grinding to a halt if there's a memory shortage, but using swap files does slow performance. Find out why. Continue Reading

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Local data storage or SAN: How storage location affects VM performance

Do the performance advantages of local storage outweigh the management benefits of a storage area network? Continue Reading

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How do disk latency and RAID groups affect VM performance?

VMs may run in memory, but they are stored on disks, meaning disk latency and RAID group configuration can be a big factor in how well they perform. Continue Reading

2Manage-

How can you improve virtualization performance?

Now that you understand what factors affect performance, you are better equipped to manage the day-to-day operations of your virtual infrastructure. Read on to learn about effective performance monitoring, proper resource utilization and important storage metrics.

3Problem solve-

How can you troubleshoot virtualization performance issues?

When managing a virtual environment, you're bound to run into issues, no matter how meticulously you set up the infrastructure and how carefully you monitor it. In this section, learn about common bottlenecks, detrimental background activity and Hyper-V configurations.

4Key terms-

What terms are associated with virtualization performance?

An essential part of fine tuning your virtualization performance management skills is knowing the terminology. Read on to familiarize yourself with key terms.