Uncovering virtual networking Part-9: IOChain Framework

The IOChain is a group of functions that provides connectivity between virtual ports and the virtual switch. It also provides the capability to insert functions into the network data-path regardless of the switch type used i.e. Standard Switch (vSS) or Distributed Switch (vDS). A virtual port has two IOChains based on the direction i.e. to … Continue reading Uncovering virtual networking Part-9: IOChain Framework

vSphere 7 Update 1 Major changes.

With the release of vSphere update 1, there is major shift in the supported compute maximums as summarised in table below.  vSphere 7vSphere 7 Update 1Virtual CPUs per VM256768Memory per VM6 TB24 TBCPUs per host768768Memory per host16 TB24 TBHosts per cluster6496 With vCenter Server 7.0 Update 1, scalability for vSphere Lifecycle Manager​ operations with ESXi hosts and … Continue reading vSphere 7 Update 1 Major changes.

AppInfo plugin in VMware Tools 11.x

https://youtu.be/ZzjpyuK7aB4 AppInfo plugin in VMware Tools 11 enables the collection of the running application processes within a Guest OS and publishes that information to VM guestInfo Property called as guestinfo.appinfo. For each application running inside the guest, the name and version information is captured and published by the plugin. The appInfo plugin collects the information in every 30 minutes … Continue reading AppInfo plugin in VMware Tools 11.x

vSphere 6.7 U2 & later CPU Scheduler modes: Default, SCA v1 and SCA v2

https://youtu.be/ZxUVk0haIKA This post will be focussing specifically on working of CPU scheduler in Default, SCA v1 and SCA v2 modes in 6.7 U2 and later. VMware vSphere 6.7 U2 added new scheduler options (SCA v2) which provides security for L1TF vulnerability, while retaining as much performance as possible.  Note: SCA is the abbreviation for Side … Continue reading vSphere 6.7 U2 & later CPU Scheduler modes: Default, SCA v1 and SCA v2

VMware vSphere 7.x Memory Reclamation-Part 5: Memory Compression Cache

In this post, we are going to discuss about memory compression cache technique used by ESXi host. In previous posts we have already discussed TPS and ballooning. So compression is the next technique in order that gets initialized when ESXi host is under memory contention. ESXi provides a memory compression cache to improve virtual machine … Continue reading VMware vSphere 7.x Memory Reclamation-Part 5: Memory Compression Cache

Uncovering Virtual Networking Part-2: Virtual Switches

As discussed in previous post Part-1: Basics, we have two types of switches that are available in vSphere i.e. Standard switch and Distributed switch. So in this post we will explore these switch types. But before we do that, let's dive into basics of switches in virtual architecture first. What is a virtual switch? A … Continue reading Uncovering Virtual Networking Part-2: Virtual Switches