SDDC Performance and Capacity Management

The above would have been the title of the book. That was what I proposed to the Publisher, as it is not actually a product book. It is more of an architecture and best practice book, focus on performance and capacity. Out of the 260 pages, the bulk of the book is not about vRealize Operations. Product wise, the book covers vSphere 5.5 more than it covers vRealize Operations 6. So it’s actually still relevant if you just want to master those vSphere counters.

Because it is not a product book, you can in fact apply a lot of the concept even if you do not have vRealize Operations. If you are looking for a product book, the best one is here.

I guess the title was too long, since SDDC needs to be spelled out 🙂 On hindsight, I should have simply called it VMware Performance and Capacity Management.

You can buy the book at the publisher site. The direct link is here. You can also buy it at other online stores such as Amazon.

I have published all the materials that the publisher allows me to publish. The links are all below. The rest of the materials are only available in the book, hence there is no link. I’d appreciate you notify the publisher if you notice it’s pirated. I’ve added material that is not in the book as I wanted to keep the book light and did not want to kill too many trees.

In addition to my materials, I’m adding links to complementary materials from fellow bloggers such as Sunny Dua, Lior Kamrat, Duncan Epping, Ivan Pepelnjak, and Frank Denneman, and Manny Sidhu. They have published good materials, and it is good to read these blog articles as they complement the book well. I’ve also added contents from blogs.vmware.com that complements the book.

Front Matters

Chapter 1: A Virtual DC, it is not a Physical DC virtualized!

Chapter 2: Capacity Management

Chapter 3: Mastering the Key Metrics

Chapter 4 – 7: Counters deep dive

Chapter 8: Use Cases and Sample Dashboards

  • This content is not available freely.
  • Additional contents to complement the chapters:
    • Standard super metrics that I normally create as part of initial installation.
    • Find out if any VMs is abusing your infrastructure by doing excessive usage.
    • Duncan Epping wrote a blog on my customer Indonesian Cloud, which uses vRealize Operations and Log Insight. Neil Cresswell, the CEO, has given permission to share one of their dashboard. I document it here.
    • VM oversized is a common bad practice. To see how bad the situation in your environment, see this dashboard.
    • If your ESXi is overheating, it can be a sign of DC cooling quality has gone down. Track the temperature or fan speed across many ESXi here with a super metric.

Additional Contents

These contents are not in the book as I wanted to keep the book light and did not want to kill too many trees. They are typically about product installation & configuration. They also contains contents that becomes available after 26 December 2014 (publication date).

Management Packs: Blue Medora NetApp

Management Packs: