VSPHERE 5.5 | BEST PRACTICES SUMMARY

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Virtual machine hardware version 10 only editable in the vCenter web client
New vCenter users show zero inventory items in the vCenter web client
Watch out for file locks when mounting a single file on more than eight hosts

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Use vApps and DRS rules for better manageability
Disconnect removable devices from the Guest OS, especially for VDI deployments
Optimize your VM templates and use them well
Use Host Profiles whenever possible (basically always) for configuration consistency
Use vSphere Operations Manager

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Optimize and verify disk I/O alignment—it stills matters today
Optimize and verify NUMA node alignment
Optimize and verify configured Host Power Management (different than DPM)
Make use of Storage I/O Control for better workload normalization
Make use of Network I/O Control for better workload normalization
Optimize and verify iSCSI storage settings (including NetApp best practices)
Optimize and verify NFS storage settings (including NetApp best practices)
Optimize resources (reservations, limits, and shares)
Optimize hosts and virtual machines for latency-sensitive applications
Right-size vCenter and vSphere Update Manager
Optimize Hosts and Storage for NetApp Integration through VAAI

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Using vSphere Operations Manager to quickly find resource constraints
Using ESXTOP to monitor CPU utilization
Using ESXTOP to monitor Memory utilization
Using ESXTOP to monitor Network utilization
Using ESXTOP to monitor Disk Adapter utilization
Using ESXTOP to monitor Disk Device utilization