Performance Troubleshooting VMware vSphere – The Tetralogy

February 15th, 2010 |

Yes a bold topic I know, but I wanted to tackle this subject because it’s such an important aspect that everyone typically deals with at some point. I also find it personally useful to document some of my thoughts so I can solidify my own understanding of these processes and tools. I will admit, this was a challenge for me to write up. There is so much material and information that I had to really focus on keeping it simple and to the point. Performance problems can span such a wide array of possibilities that there is never typically one easy answer. Hopefully by highlighting some of the tools that are available for use, and offering some of my personal thoughts and experiences, I might be able to help when problems arise in your infrastructure.

There is so much useful information floating around on PDF’s, blog’s, websites, PowerPoint decks, that one could easily get consumed by this topic. Since this is such a broad topic, I wanted to try and set the stage. The focus of this series of blog posts is to highlight some key components to examine, and then provide tools that will give you insight into your own environment and/or situation. This page will be the launch point for the various categories. Each blog post will cover a different category relating to the possible points of I/O in a VMware ESX environment.

Performance Troubleshooting VMware vSphere – CPU

Performance Troubleshooting VMware vSphere – Memory

Performance Troubleshooting VMware vSphere – Storage

Performance Troubleshooting VMware vSphere – Network

There is one last I/O component that I will not be covering, and that is the human factor. These posts will assume that your installation or upgrade is of sound mind and body. If there are underlying installation issues or post upgrade issues, I suggest engaging VMware support before examining conventional performance problems.