Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
VM Isolation
Certain VMs may indeed need to be limited to a specifi c amount of outbound bandwidth. Servers
such as FTP, fi le and print, web and proxy servers, or any server whose main function is to act as
a fi le repository or connection broker may need to be limited or the tra c may need to be shaped
to an amount of bandwidth that allows it to meet its service target but not monopolize the host it
runs on. Isolating any of these VMs to a vSwitch of its own is more likely a better solution, but it
requires the appropriate hardware confi guration.
To get an idea of how much network trafi c is actually being generated, you can measure out-
going and incoming network trafi c from a VM or host using the charts in vCenter Server. The
charts can provide accurate information on the actual usage or ample information that a par-
ticular VM is monopolizing a virtual switch, especially using the Stacked Graph chart type.
Perform the following steps to create a real-time chart for a stacked graph of transmitted net-
work usage by each VM on an ESXi host:
1.
Launch the vSphere Web Client if it is not already running, and connect to a vCenter
Server instance.
2.
Navigate to either the Hosts And Clusters view or the VMs And Templates view.
3.
In the Navigator, click an ESXi host. This shows you the Summary tab.
4.
Click the Performance tab, and switch to Advanced view.
5.
Click the Chart Options link.
6.
From the Chart Options dialog box, select the Network resource type and the Real-Time
display interval in the Chart Options area.
7.
Select a chart type of Stacked Graph (Per VM).
8.
In the objects list, be sure all the VMs are selected.
9.
In the list of counters, select the Network Data Transmit Rate counter.
This gives you an idea of how much network bandwidth each VM is consuming out-
bound on this ESXi host.
10.
Click OK to apply the changes and return to the Performance tab.
What if you wanted a breakdown of trafi c on each of the network interface cards (NICs) in
the ESXi host instead of by VM? That's fairly easily accomplished by another trip back to the
Chart Options dialog box.
Perform the following steps to create a real-time chart for a host's transmitted network usage
by NIC:
1.
Connect to a vCenter Server instance with the vSphere Web Client.
2.
Navigate to the Hosts And Clusters view.
