10 Virtual Machine Techniques to Boost Efficiency

Virtualization offers major productivity gains, but truly optimizing your virtual machines is easier said than done. Kenneth Hess overviews some efficiency-boosting tips.

Virtual infrastructures suffer from inefficiencies that have simple solutions. From poor virtual machine performance to stalled Motions to confusing system names, these 10 virtual machine optimization tips explain how to easily solve each problem. This list of 10 items can increase efficiency, decrease unexpected downtime and can make your virtualization efforts pay for themselves.

1. Updated Hardware

Although using the latest hardware for your virtualization infrastructure has obvious optimization capability, updated hardware refers to firmware and BIOS updates. Keep track of critical updates in these two areas and maintain quarterly patch cycles for hardware. Hardware patch maintenance is often overlooked as part of an overall support plan. Ignoring hardware patches can result in failures or security breaches. Performance optimization is often a positive side-effect of hardware updates.

2. Host Licensing

Host licensing won’t boost performance, but purchasing licenses or expanded licenses from your vendor unlocks features that aren’t available in free versions or in standard versions. For example, upgrading from VMware vSphere Enterprise to Enterprise Plus unlocks scalability features that significantly expands host and virtual machine (VM) capabilities.

3. Dedicated Motion Network

When configuring a virtual infrastructure, pay particular attention to network setup. Create a separate network, an internal private network, for Motions (moving workloads between hosts). This private network should have gigabit (Gb) or multi-Gb capacity. This isolation creates a network between virtual host systems that provides a fast and secure substrate for workload and storage Motions.

Read the rest about virtual machine efficiency at ServerWatch.

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