Resource Pools and VMTools Best Practices

Question

Are there any published (or non-published) best practices with using Resource Pools in a View environment? Using Shares/Limits etc...Also, when installing the VMTools on a desktop, are there any best practice configurations with running the tools within a desktop?Resource Pools and VMTools Best Practices

Answer 1

For VMware Tools - always install them and ensure TimeSync is enabled unless you have specific reasons not to.

Resource Pool configuration is highly flexible and there isn't any one size fits all "Best Practice" for View or for any other vSphere environment. Deciding how to partition your resources, what limits and reservations are appropriate and how you want shares to bias priorities amongst groups of VM's is a significant design exercise and the specifics will vary hugely depending on the hardware that you have, the classes of VM (and user) you support, the SLA's that you need to meet and the features you want to support.

The one strong recommendation I'd make is don't enable expandable reservations on pools unless you fully trust all VM admins below the level that you wish to enable that setting because expandable reservation allows such an administrator to take resources from higher level pools at will and those "borrowed resources" remain reserved (unavailable to anything else) until the specific VM's that caused the expansion are either shut down or have their reservations modified. The only other guideline I can think of is the obvious one - make sure the settings you choose deliver the minimum\maximum performance levels that you want specific VM's to have.

Answer 2

I'm no View expert but certainly I always install all of the vmtools and ensure that timesyc is enabled.