Best Practices When Deploying VMware vSphere on the HP ProLiant DL980 (updated October 2012)

Figure 3: Enabling OS Control Mode Using RBSU

Increasing network bandwidth

VMware introduced Network I/O Control (NetIOC) capabilities with vSphere 4.1. NetIOC delivers the following key

capabilities:

 All network traffic shares the same physical adapter.

 Bandwidth is apportioned between the various traffic types according to your specifications.

 You can take advantage of 10 Gb connectivity, which allows you to increase the concurrent vMotion migrations from 4

(for a 1 Gb network) to 8.

NetIOC is configured in conjunction with the network switch vDS to isolate and prioritize network traffic. Rather than

employing a fixed bandwidth for each type of traffic, NetIOC allocates a specified share of the server’s physical network

resources to each. For example, you can assign a higher share of the bandwidth to vMotion traffic than to management

traffic. Furthermore, you can increase the total bandwidth available by upgrading the 1 Gb ports provided by the DL980

to 10 Gb. For example, you can install the optional HP NC524SFP Dual Port 10GbE Module to upgrade 2 of the 4

embedded network ports from 1 Gb to 10 Gb.

To use vCenter to configure NetIOC, follow these steps:

1. Enable NetIOC on the desired network switch by navigating to Properties > Resource Allocation.

2. Set the desired bandwidth shares once NetIOC is enabled by right-clicking the appropriate resource pool and using

the Edit Settings menu.

3. See the VMware ESX/ESXi Configuration Guide for more information:

vmware.com/support/pubs

Installing HP NMI driver for VMware ESX/ESXi 4.1

VMware introduced the ability to register for non-maskable interrupt (NMI) events in the ESX/ESXi 4.1 kernel. As a result,

HP is providing an NMI driver (hpnmi) that works with the ESX/ESXi 4.1 kernel to log NMI information to the HP

Integrated Management Log (IML).

If you have installed the HP NMI driver, ESX/ESXi automatically halts the server when an NMI occurs and displays a

purple screen of death (PSOD), along with the following message:

Panic requested by 3rd party NMI handlers