NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices

12 VIRTUAL MACHINE BEST PRACTICES
12.1 WINDOWS VM FILE SYSTEM PERFORMANCE OPTION
OPTIMIZING WINDOWS FILE SYSTEM FOR OPTIMAL I/O PERFORMANCE
If your virtual machine is not acting as a file server you may want to consider implementing the following
change to your virtual machines, which will disable the access time updates process in NTFS. This change
will reduce the amount of IOPs occurring within the file system. To make this change complete the following
steps.
1. Log into a Windows VM
2. Select Start > Run and enter CMD
3. Enter fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1
12.2 ENSURING OPTIMUM VM AVAILABILITY
OPTIMIZING VM SCSI BUS
In Section 7 we covered the ESX Host Utilities. One of the components of the host utilities is the GOS
timeout scripts, which are a collection of ISO images that can be mounted by a VM in order to configure its
local SCSI to values that are optimal for running in a virtual infrastructure.
To Install the GOS Timeout Scripts complete the following steps:
1 Download the EHU.
2 Copy the EHU to a location accessible to the ESX.
3 Extract the EHU by running tar –zxf .tar.gz.
4 From within vCenter Server select a VM to upgrade, right-click it, and select edit
settings.
5 Select CDROM and the ISO radio button.
6 Select the appropriate ISO, matching the OS of the VM your are configuring.
7 Select OK.
8 Connect to the VM console.
9 Run the script for the OS of the VM.
10 Exit and unmount the ISO image.
11 Repeat as necessary for each VM.
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