Hyper-V Top performance and capacity tips

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Beatrix Maxwell
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1 Hyper-V Top performance and capacity tips

2 Introduction This paper discusses the changes in Windows/Hyper-V 2012 and what that means from the perspective of the business and managing the capacity. It will concentrate on the following areas: Technology recap Updates to the functionality Comparison between VMware and Hyper-V Metrics and Monitoring Top tips for managing Hyper-V capacity 2 Hyper-V Top performance and capacity tips

3 Technology recap What is Hyper-V? Even though Hyper-V has been out there for some time it is still not widely adopted. It is similar in design to Xen; still classed as a type 1 hypervisor, but has a managing partition rather than Vmware which has multiple guests running on a hypervisor. It was first released in June 2008 and the latest versions are available by enabling a role within Windows 2012 or via the core version. The key elements are: The hypervisor (around 100k in size) Parent or root partition (the first and controlling guest) Child partitions Two versions Full and server core The main difference between the two versions is the available functionality. The core version purely allows for Hyper-V, whereas the full Windows 2012 allows for all of the usual windows roles to be enabled e.g. IIS, AD, FTP etc This is an architecture diagram from MSDN which gives you an idea of how the architecture hangs together. On the left you can see the root partition which effectively manages the child partition and allows you to create them. The key differentiator here is the enlightened and unenlightened child partitions, when a partition is enlightened it enables you to use VMware type tools and provides better all round performance. You will need to bear in mind that the child partitions communicate to the hyper visor via the root partition from the I/O perspective, so if the root partition is very busy performance and capacity may be impacted. Hyper-V Top performance and capacity tips 3

Updates to functionality There are numerous updates to functionality. The last reasonable contender was Hyper-V 2008. The following tables summarize the differences and what they mean.

As you can see from the table Windows 2008 R2 provided live migration, but relied on the servers being built as a windows cluster boxes, so it didn t really provide the functionality and flexibility

4 Updates to functionality There are numerous updates to functionality. The last reasonable contender was Hyper-V The following tables summarize the differences and what they mean. Hyper-V 2012 has increased guest and cluster support bringing these up to serious production levels. As you can see from the table Windows 2008 R2 provided live migration, but relied on the servers being built as a windows cluster boxes, so it didn t really provide the functionality and flexibility that VMware gave you and being single instance, you could only do one live migration event automatically. These changes mean that we re now looking at a far closer parity with VMware. We now have the option to migrate child partitions between Windows servers that aren t clustered and combined with live storage migration, migrate between servers that aren t running on shared storage as well. This now provides a good deal of flexibility. 4 Hyper-V Top performance and capacity tips

5 One of the key differences in 2012 is the addition of SR-IOV support which allows full access to the physical network adapters for a guest. You will see that from the size of some of the virtual machines that could, in theory, be created the next bottlenecks will undoubtedly be in shared networking. The SR-IOV support is a key facilitator for having this size of virtual machine and allows for complete access to the network adapter. So the required network bandwidth will be available to cope with the volume of work that the guests are going to have to do. Dynamic memory now has improved management. Memory reclamation is included which allows you to balloon things when required and also to allow a guest to start up even if minimum memory is not available. In a lot of respects this is a step forward in terms of what VMware have available, as Hyper-V will allow you to dig in to what the box is doing and balloon in an intelligent way, to free up memory and allow you to get other resources available. Guest NUMA support extends the hardware based functionality into the realms of the guest; again, key given the potential guest resource allocation. Smart paging is intelligent memory management that allows you to bridge the gaps between minimum and start up memory if physical resource is low. This is more dynamic in terms of how it is managing its memory and is an improvement over VMware. Runtime memory configuration allows you to change the dynamic memory allocation when the virtual machine is running, which is a big operational step forward when managing heavily utilized environments. Resource metering allows you to track how key performance metrics are used over time. Not quite as good as it sounds, predominantly around the network side of things and allows you to monitor some of these key metrics tied really with chargeback more than anything else and persists through live migration. Hyper-V Top performance and capacity tips 5

6 Comparison between VMware and Hyper-V Now we ll take a look at how Hyper-V 2012 compares with VMware. The table below shows the differences. The Raw Device Mapping (RDM) is effectively allowing you to connect the hard disk directly to a virtual machine. Within vsphere 5.1 this can be done up to 64TB whilst Microsoft suggests that Hyper-V 2012 can do 256TB plus and is only limited by the size of the physical disk so there is scope to grow. Both vsphere 5.1 and Hyper-V 2012 offers similar support for guests, although interestingly this has only been provided by VMware on a recent upgrade to 5.1 and it s the first time that VMware have had to upgrade their software to catch up with Hyper-V. Currently Hyper-V supports larger cluster sizes and is potentially cheaper, although this appears to be dependent on which website you re looking at. If your organization is buying datacenter licenses then certainly Microsoft can work out more cost effective, a data centre licence allows you to enable the hyper-v role and then all of the guests running on that server are automatically licensed. The same cannot be said for VMware, which involves buying the VMware software and then your Microsoft software. Hyper-V comes with enterprise functionality available as standard whereas with VMware you tend to have to have the higher level versions to unlock things like V-motion etc. It s a similar story when looking at the management layer, Hyper-V can be managed with the out of the box tool whereas VMware requires the purchase of vcenter. With regards to the performance comparison, there are very few independent sources that have performed an objective comparison and the likelihood is, each would perform better in different circumstances. That said and whilst Hyper-V 2012 is still quite new, early test results suggests that there is not much between the two platforms with regards to CPU and memory. Early reports, suggest: Improved IO throughput with Hyper-V Comparable CPU loading Improved memory utilization with Hyper-V It s still too early to tell whether there are significant benefits to be had by choosing one over the other. 6 Hyper-V Top performance and capacity tips

7 Metrics and Monitoring What metrics you should be looking at and what are the options for capturing the data? Let s look at the options for capturing the data first. Hyper-V Manager is an out of the box tool which is more of a management GUI, similar to vcenter in some respects but not quite as polished or developed. It doesn t really have any performance or capacity aspects, but provides a little bit of information but not to the same level as vcenter. System Center Operations Manager is Microsoft s management monitoring tool and provides a central source of monitoring for Hyper-V. It is driven by having Hyper-V management packs and can provide a useful source of information. The main issue with SCOM is that there are minimal metrics and they don t always capture the right level of data for Capacity Management. Although there is some basic trending, there are no modeling capabilities and there is no real control over inbuilt aggregation. It tends to be captured with the operational end of the tool and then automatically aggregated as it s put into the data warehouse. It does provide some monitoring level support so you can see the Host, Guest, potentially cluster level and some of the application metrics. System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) allows for multiple host management and multiple hypervisor management. The template and library management allows automatic deployment from templates. It has integrated P2V conversions, a modicum of virtual machine performance monitoring (from SCOM) and allows you to drive live migration events. Interestingly it allows you manage your VMware estate as well, via vcenter. Whilst it does provide some metrics, they tend to be fairly high level and it is more of a monitoring alerting tool rather than capacity management tool. Moving onto capturing performance data; the main sources of information are the Hyper-V performance counters as seen from the root partition, there are 21 functioning counters that provide around 600 metrics in total and Vendor products should interrogate these remotely via WMI. Sadly Perfmon metrics within each guest partition may not be reliable for CPU etc, due to processor skew, so be careful how this data is being used. However certain other metrics can be used and these can be seen via SCVMM. In guest monitoring is very light (as it is in VMware), so process level metrics aren t captured, so an additional in guest agent will be required. Now the performance counters For the CPU, the following objects can provide a useful source of information: Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor Hyper-V Hypervisor Root Virtual Processor Hyper-V Hypervisor Virtual Processor Processor Hyper-V Top performance and capacity tips 7

8 One important fact to be aware of, if you are monitoring the root partition the processor counter isn t a Hyper-V counter and will give you the wrong numbers. To accurately monitor how the physical hardware, CPU s and the guests are being utilized you will need to use the Hyper-V hypervisor counters. The processor counter isn t virtualized and isn t aware that it is virtualized. For the memory, the following objects are recommended: Hyper-V Hypervisor Partition Hyper-V Hypervisor Root Partition Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Balancer Hyper-V Dynamic Memory VM Memory These provide a good overview of how the memory is being consumed at the partition level and at the hypervisor level via the Dynamic Memory counters. The Memory performance object also provides some guidance as to the host level consumption. From the perspective of the network, the following objects provide all the required data about the physical interfaces and the performance when virtualized. Network Interface Hyper-V Virtual Switch Hyper-V Legacy Network Adapter Hyper-V Virtual Network Adapter As I said previously the network side of things becomes more and more important as we re starting to have larger numbers of, and larger sized, virtual machines undertaking the work. The network interface counter is still valid and is a very useful way of understanding how the network ports are being used. Finally the storage counters provide a useful level of information relating to the disks, both from the physical and virtual perspectives. Physical Disk Hyper-V Virtual IDE Controller Hyper-V Virtual Storage Device As with any OS level performance monitoring, the usual rules apply when dealing with SAN based storage. The technology employed by SAN s to manage the disks and improve the performance e.g. caching, buffering etc remain transparent to the OS, so be wary of how the data interpreted. Response times are usually an indicator, disk utilization less so. 8 Hyper-V Top performance and capacity tips

9 Top tips for managing Hyper-V capacity The key to success is getting the right data. WMI access directly to the host provides a view on physical and partition usage but crucially misses the wider cluster view and lacks application/ process information. SCOM/SCVMM potentially provides a wider view of performance; however the default metrics are still light from a performance and capacity viewpoint. Hyper-V can capture from Windows and Linux information, so you ll need to understand the different types of metrics coming back and what they mean on different operating systems. In essence, capturing across the enterprise is key. Key to monitoring Hyper-V (and any virtualization platform) is understanding the different levels e.g. Cluster, Host, Guest etc In Hyper-V the cluster is less clear than VMware with less data available and different ways of implementing it. You can have individual application clusters for highly resilient systems, so you have one or more physical boxes created as a Windows cluster and then you enable Hyper-V or you may have a particular set of servers ring fenced for key applications or services. You could also group business units, departments, locations etc into notional cluster containers that your Hyper-V admins may have little interest in, but may provide a valuable source of information for capacity management. Ultimately, you need to be able to answer questions such as are my hosts balanced? How much capacity do I have left in the cluster? etc. Understanding how the host is performing and how much capacity is available, look at how the physical counters are being used and remember to use the Hyper-V aware counters as well. For the guests, understanding their resource consumption when compared to the overall host/cluster is important and being able to monitor at the process level from within the guest should assist in application capacity planning and ensuring adequate performance. Hyper-V Top performance and capacity tips 9

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