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Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4 and ESX 4.0
VMware Communities: Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4 and ESX 4.0

Some links for Performance Troubleshooting:

http://blogs.vmware.com/performance/2009/09/performance-troubleshooting-for-vmware-vsphere-4-and-esx-40.html

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1008885
 

ESXTOP

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/esxtop/

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9279
 

A couple of questions first – how many VMs are running on this ESXi host? What are their configurations in terms of memory and vCPUs? Did this recently start happening or is this been a problem since the server cam on line? What is the configuration of your ESXi host – memory, physical  CPUs, how do you connect to storage? 

The key metrics to look at are:

• For CPU contention look at the CPU Ready Time metric
• For Memory look at he Balloon Driver metric

Some best pracices –

• Make sure all your VMs have VMware Tools installed
• Make sure all your VMs have single vCPU unless absolutely necessary

 

Here are some additional links and are very good at explaining everything.

 

esxtop:

 

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-5240

 

vSphere

 

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10352

 

CPU

 

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-5420

 

Storage

 

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-5490

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-6490

 

MEM

 

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-5430

A useful document to download and keep at hand: Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4 and ESX 4 http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10352

It’s hard to say for sure what is causing the guest performance issue without more information.  What is the configuration of the virtual machine in terms of vCPUs and memory?  And what about the rest of the VMs on the host?  Have you tried using esxtop from the Service Console to try to narrow down where the performance problems might be?  One stat in particular that might be of help is the %RDY stat, which if higher than 10% would indicate performance problems on the guests.  If you’re unfamiliar with esxtop, here are some links to help get you started. 

Commonly used esxtop performance counters: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-5240

Memory analysis: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-5430

CPU analysis: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-5420

Storage analysis: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-5490

Network analysis: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-5500

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