The Top 10 Virtual Configurations You SHOULDN'T Implement Tom Howarth Owner PlanetVM.NET Pre-requisites for this presentation: 1) General understanding of Virtualization Level: Intermediate

About the Speaker Tom Howarth is a seasoned IT Professional with over 15 years experience in the field. He has over 4 years Virtualization experience and is considered one of the leading VDI experts. Has had many lives, Soldier, Policeman, Lawyer, IT Professional, Husband and Father. The last two are the hardest

Introduction We all know the what are considered “Best Practice” when designing a Virtual infrastructure However what is “Worst Practice” well to start it is not the opposite of “Best Practice” This presentation will attempt to present a vendor agnostic view of what are the top 10 configurations that you should not implement This may not always be possible due to vendor differences

1: vCPU More is Less Virtualization software allows the creation of VM guests with Multiple CPUs. Just because you can does not mean you should. Yes vSphere has enhanced scheduling. BUT You still need 2, 4 or 8 cores available to service your multi-threaded applications.

2: Guest Swap or Host Swap We all know VMware ESX can over commit memory But as before just be cause you can does not mean you should. A Guests Operating System can better manage its memory than ESX. Memory swapped by ESX could be any OS page, it is indiscriminate.

3: vCenter and Guest naming vCenter can have a name that is up to 50 characters in length. Sounds good, I can have very descriptive names However on VM creation the file location for the VMDK file is based on the vCenter Name. Best Practice is to just use the Machinename.

4: Storage Extents – they are not funny But they do have a place Remember Consistency is the key Name your Data-stores the same across the Cluster. Remember it is about spindle count as well as speed of disk and RAID type.

5: Snapshots are not a backup Do not run your guests on snaps. Snaps are a very useful technology, use them but remember to commit.

6: Keys to the Kingdom The Service Console is the master. Protect it Even with as little as two physical NICs you should take precautions to separate traffic VLANs are not a security mechanism, but if it is all you have got - use them

7: Remember your log files During a ESX build, do not just accept the default partitioning table You are an accident waiting to happen Always create at least a /var partition Always increase your /swap to 1600mb.

8: HA and Blade Chassis We all Know that Blades are an excellent space saving technology, but they do create other major design issues in a VMware environment. HA has 5 primary masters Design to a maximum of 4 blades per chassis per cluster.

9: Live Migration with Hyper-V R2 is just around the corner, Live Migration is here for the Microsoft users. Remember to Right size your guests as you do not have memory over commit. However do not expect to be able to Live Migrate your guests. To migrate with Hyper-V you will need to leave space on your hosts for the machine to move into.

10: Linked Clones in VDI I once went to a customer site and found that they had just suddenly run out of all space on their Data-Store that were running Linked Clones, Why? Because somebody thought it a good idea to re-authorise the “Auto-Defrag” feature of Vista in GPO. Moral – Virtualization is more that just the VI. To do it properly it means “TRANSFORMATION”

I will be staying on so if you have any questions, just tap me on the shoulder and ask.