VNX Best Practices

1. Storage Processor (SP) Cache Size:
Read Cache - 10% of the available Cache. (Recommended Min 200MB & Max 1024 MB).
   Note: read cache facilitates pre-fetching, so it doesn't need to be large. Increases read cache above recommended values only if if you know that you have multiple application with sequential read-intensive.
Write Cache - set remaining memory to write cache.

2. Cache Page Size: min amount of SP memory used to serve a single I/O request.
Default: 8 KB provide a good balance for both Block ad File Storage.
Increase Max 16 KB; in case your environment has large-lock I/O size.
Other sizes 2 KB and 4 KB is good for like database environments.

3. Cache watermark: controls the flushing behavior of write cache.
Recommended - Low 60% High 80% (maintain diff b/w low ad high of about 20%)

4. Physical drive placement: place highest performing drives in lowest numbered enclosures on each bus.

5.Hot Spares: allocate 1 hot spare or every 30 drives.

6. Drive Type:
FLASH: extreme performance / transactional random workloads.
SAS: General Permormance
NL-SAS: Archive Purpose / aging data.

7. IOPS: Calculated based on drive types


8. RAID Level:
RAID 1/0 - Heavy Transnational with >25% random writes
RAID 5 - Medium-High performance, sequential
RAID 6 - archiving, read-biased workloads

9. Maximum Drives in a Pool:


10. FAST Cache: Recommended to have size of Active Data set.
EMC has tools to determine the active data set, or else in general 5% of the capacity would be good


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ESX Version Comparision



Virtual Machine Maximums
ESX 5.5
ESX 5.1
ESX 5
ESX 4.1
ESX 4.0
ESX 3.5
ESX 3
ESX 2
ESX 1
Virtual CPUs per virtual machine
64
64
32
8
8
4
4
2
1
RAM per virtual machine
1TB
1TB
1TB
255GB
255GB
65GB
16GB
3,6GB
2GB
Virtual SCSI adapters per virtual machine
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
Virtual disk size
62TB
2TB
2TB
2TB
2TB
2TB
2TB

IDE controllers per virtual machine
1
1
1
1
1
1


IDE devices per virtual machine
4
4
4
4
4
4


Floppy controllers per virtual machine
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Floppy devices per virtual machine
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
Virtual NICs per virtual machine
10
10
10
10
10
4
4
4
4
USB controllers per virtual machine
1
1
1
1




USB devices connected to a virtual machine
20
20
20
20




Parallel ports per virtual machine
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
1
USB 3.0 devices per virtual machine
1
1





Concurrent remote console connections
40
40
40
40
40
10
10


Host Maximums
ESX 5.5
ESX 5.1
ESX 5
ESX 4.1
ESX 4.0
ESX 3.5
ESX 3
ESX 2
ESX 1
Logical CPUs per host
320
160
160
160
64
32
32
16
8
Virtual machines per host
512
512
512
320
320
128
128
80
64
Virtual CPUs per host
4096
2048
2048
512
512
128
128
80
64
Virtual CPUs per core
32
25
25
25
20
8
8
8
8
RAM per host
4TB
2TB
2TB
1TB
1TB
256GB
256GB
64GB
64GB
LUNs per server
256
256
256
256
256




vCenter Server Maximums
vCenter Server Maximums
ESX 5.5
ESX 5.1
ESX 5
ESX 4.1
ESX 4.0
ESX 3.5
ESX 3
Hosts per vCenter Server
1000
1000
1000
1000
300
200
200
Powered on virtual machines
10000
10000
10000
10000
3000
2000
Registered virtual machines
15000
15000
15000
15000
4500
2000
Linked vCenter Servers
10
10
10
10
10

Hosts in linked vCenter Servers
3000
3000
3000
3000
1000

Powered on virtual machines in linked vCenter
30000
30000
30000
30000
10000

Registered virtual machines in linked vCenter
50000
50000
50000
50000
15000

Concurrent vSphere Clients
100
100
100
100
30

Number of host per datacenter
500
500
500
400
100

MAC addresses per vCenter Server
65536
65536
65536



USB devices connected at vSphere Client
20
20
20




Cluster and Resource Pool Maximums
ESX 5.5
ESX 5.1
ESX 5
ESX 4.1
ESX 4.0
ESX 3.5
Hosts per cluster
32
32
32
32
32
32
Virtual machines per cluster
4000
4000
3000
3000
1280
Virtual machines per host
512
512
512
320
100
Maximum concurrent host HA failover
32
32
4
4
Failover as percentage of cluster
100%
100%
50%
50%
Resource pools per cluster
1600
1600
1600
512
512
128
Resource pools per host
1600
1600
1600
4096
Children per resource pool
1024
1024
1024
1024

Resource pool tree depth
8
8
8
8
12
12


Network Maximums
ESX 5.5
ESX 5.1
ESX 5
ESX 4.1
ESX 4.0
ESX 3.5
ESX 3
Total virtual network switch ports per host
4096
4096
4096
4096
4096
127
Maximum active ports per host
1016
1050
1016
1016
1016
1016
Virtual network switch creation ports
4088
4088
4088
4088
4088

Port groups
512
256
256
512
512
512
Distributed virtual network switch ports per vCenter
60000
60000
30000
20000
6000

Static port groups per vCenter
10000
10000
5000
5000
512

Ephemeral port groups per vCenter
1016
256
256
1016


Hosts per VDS
500
500
350
350
64

Distributed switches per vCenter
128
128
32
32
16

e1000 1Gb Ethernet ports (Intel PCI?x)
32
32
32
32
32
32
e1000e 1Gb Ethernet ports (Intel PCI?e)
24
24
24
24
32
32
32
igb 1Gb Ethernet ports (Intel)
16
16
16
16
16

tg3 1Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom)
32
32
32
32
32

bnx2 1Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom)
16
16
16
16
16

forcedeth 1Gb Ethernet ports (NVIDIA)
2
2
2
2

nx_nic 10Gb Ethernet ports (NetXen)
8
8
8
4
4

ixgbe 10Gb Ethernet ports (Intel)
8
8
8
4
4

bnx2x 10Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom)
8
8
8
4
4

be2net 10Gb Ethernet ports (Emulex)
8
8
8
4
4

VMDirectPath PCI/PCIe devices per host
8
8
8
8
8

VMDirectPath PCI/PCIe devices per virtual machine
4
4
4
4


Concurrent vMotion operations per host (1Gb/s network)
4
4
4
2
2

Concurrent vMotion operations per host (10Gb/s network)
8
8
8






Storage Maximums
ESX 5.5
ESX 5.1
ESX 5
ESX 4.1
ESX 4.0
ESX 3.5
ESX 3
Qlogic 1Gb iSCSI HBA initiator ports per server
4
4
4
4


Broadcom 1Gb iSCSI HBA initiator ports per server
4
4
4
4


Broadcom 10Gb iSCSI HBA initiator ports per server
4
4
4
4


Software iSCSI NICs per server
8
8
8
8


Number of total paths on a server
1024
1024
1024
1024


Number of paths to a iSCSI LUN
8
8
8
8


Qlogic iSCSI: dynamic targets per adapter port
64
64
64
64


Qlogic iSCSI: static targets per adapter port
62
62
62
62


Broadcom 1Gb iSCSI HBA targets per adapter port
64
64
64
64


Broadcom 10Gb iSCSI HBA targets per adapter port
128
128
128
64


Software iSCSI targets
256
256
256
256
256

NFS mounts per host
256
256
256
64
64

FC LUNs per host
256
256
256
256
256
256
256
FC LUN ID
255
255
255
255
255
255
255
FC Number of paths to a LUN
32
32
32
32
32
32
32
Number of total paths on a server
1024
1024
1024
1024
1024
1024
1024
Number of HBAs of any type
8
8
8
8
8

HBA ports
16
16
16
16
16
16
Targets per HBA
256
256
256
256
256
15
Software FCoE adapters
4
4
4



Volumes per host
256
256
256
256
256
256
Hosts per volume
64
64
64
64
64
32
Powered on virtual machines per VMFS volume
2048
2048
2048
256

Concurrent vMotion operations per datastore
128
128
128



Concurrent Storage vMotion operations per datastore
8
8
8



Concurrent Storage vMotion operations per host
2
2
2



Concurrent non vMotion provisioning operations per host
8
8
8



VMFS Volume size
64TB
64TB
64TB
64TB
64TB
64TB

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