vSphere High Performance Cookbook is written in a practical, helpful style with numerous recipes focusing on answering and providing solutions to common, and not-so common, performance issues and problems.The book is primarily written for technical professionals with system administration skills and some VMware experience who wish to learn about advanced optimization and the configuration features and functions for vSphere 5.1.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: CPU Performance Design Chapter 2: Memory Performance Design Chapter 3: Networking Performance Design Chapter 4: DRS, SDRS, and Resource Control Design Chapter 5: vSphere Cluster Design Chapter 6: Storage Performance Design Chapter 7: Designing vCenter and vCenter Database for Best Performance Chapter 8: Virtual Machine and Application Performance Design Index Preface Up Chapter 1: CPU Performance Design Introduction Critical performance consideration VMM scheduler CPU scheduler processor topology/cache aware Ready time warning sign Hyperthreaded core sharing Spotting CPU overcommitment Fighting guest CPU saturation in SMP VMs Controlling CPU resources using resource settings What is most important to monitor in CPU performance CPU performance best practices Up Chapter 2: Memory Performance Design Introduction Virtual memory reclamation techniques Monitoring host-swapping activity Monitoring host-ballooning activity Keeping memory free for VMkernel Key memory performance metrics to monitor What metrics not to use Identifying when memory is the problem Analyzing host and VM memory Memory performance best practices Up Chapter 3: Networking Performance Design Introduction Designing a network for load balancing and failover for vSphere Standard Switch Designing a network for load balancing and failover for vSphere Distributed Switch What to know when offloading checksum Selecting the correct virtual network adapter Improving performance through VMDirectPath I/O Improving performance through NetQueue Improving network performance using the SplitRx mode for multicast traffic Designing a multi-NIC vMotion Improving network performance using network I/O control Monitoring network capacity and performance matrix Up Chapter 4: DRS, SDRS, and Resource Control Design Introduction Using DRS algorithm guidelines Using resource pool guidelines Avoiding using resource pool as folder structure Choosing the best SIOC latency threshold Using storage capability and profile driven storage Anti-affinity rules in the SDRS cluster Avoiding the use of SDRS I/O Metric and array-based automatic tiering together Using VMware SIOC and array-based automatic tiering together Up Chapter 5: vSphere Cluster Design Introduction Trade-off factors while designing scale up and scale out clusters Using VM Monitoring vSphere Fault Tolerance design and its impact DPM and its impact Choosing the reserved cluster failover capacity Rightly choosing the vSphere HA cluster size Up Chapter 6: Storage Performance Design Introduction Designing the host for a highly available and high-performing storage Designing a highly available and high-performance iSCSI SAN Designing a highly available and high-performing FC storage Performance impact of queuing on the storage array and host Factors that affect storage performance Using VAAI to boost storage performance Selecting the right VM disk type Monitoring command queuing Identifying a severely overloaded storage Up Chapter 7: Designing vCenter and vCenter Database for Best Performance Introduction vCenter Single Sign-On and its database preparation vCenter Single Sign-On and its deployment Things to bear in mind while designing the vCenter platform Designing vCenter Server for redundancy Designing a highly available vCenter database vCenter database size and location affects performance Considering vCenter Server Certificates to minimize security threats Designing vCenter Server for Auto Deploy Up Chapter 8: Virtual Machine and Application Performance Design Introduction Setting the right time in Guest OS vNUMA (Virtual NUMA) considerations Choosing the SCSI controller for storage Impact of VM swap file placement Using large pages in virtual machines Guest OS networking considerations When you should or should not virtualize an application Measuring the application's performance