asked on

VirtualCenter 2.5 and the Consolidation Tool

I'm very new to vmware. Anyway I just installed VC2.5 for the first time and added one of my ESX3.5 servers. I have been reading about the Consolidation tool in VC. Would it be possible for me to use this tool against an existing Windows 2003 VM to make sure it is scalled correctly? If so, how would I do this?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Paul Solovyovsky

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

compdigit44

ASKER

Would running the Consolidation Tool cause any performance problem on the VM it running against?

The Windows 2003 server is running Enterprise is a internal web server and has 8GB of ram assigned to it? Does VMware have any articles on the proper configureation of resourse of a VM running IIS?

When I create a VM I have read that it is "best practices" to ALWAYS setup a memory reservation of at least 30% of the assigned memory? is this true? Woudl this help with the over all performance on my ESX server?

Thanks Again,

Paul Solovyovsky

There is no performance hit. The Consolidation Tool does not use agent, it uses remote registry and WMI to gather the information which means that the resource hit is negligible.

I normally set reservation of zero because I have enough resources. By setting reservation of 30% you may not be reserving too much memory. You can set the reservation to zero and run the performance reports after a few weeks to see how much memory/cpu the VM is using.

compdigit44

ASKER

Thanks for the reply I guess what I'm asking if is setting even a small memory reservation for all VM would help the over all performance on the ESX server. This is what I'm trying to find out and do not understand

SOLUTION

kumarnirmal

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

kumarnirmal

Also bear in mind that the in-built Consolidation tool can support a maximum of 100 P2V Conversions.

compdigit44

ASKER

Thanks for the reply everyone. I guess I'm still a little confused. I'm try to make sure my ESX 3.5 server is running as efficient as possilbe and not no one VM runs away with resources. This is why so articles recommend setting up all vm with a reservations but I can't get a straight answer on this.