Running Adaptive Server on VMware vSphere 5.0

Adaptive Server version 15.7 SP100 adds support for VMware vSphere 5.0.

After you install Adaptive Server on VMware, Sybase recommends that you:

Examine the BIOS settings, disabling any unnecessary processes and peripherals
Direct critical computing resources (CPU, memory, network, and I/O) to the databases
Install the VMware tools on the guest operating system

Note: Refer to the VMware Compatibility Guide to view hardware supported by VMware. Sybase's internal testing determined Adaptive Server's performance may depend on the vSphere configurations for the hardware you chose. Refer to VMware published best practices for running vSphere on the hardware.

Configure the BIOS Settings
Sybase recommends that you change some BIOS settings before you run Adaptive Server on the VMware guest operating system.
Configure the Guest Operating System
After the installation is complete, disable unnecessary foreground and background processes.
CPU Considerations
To improve performance for latency-sensitive applications running on guest operating systems, schedule all virtual machines on the same Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) node. Allocate all virtual memory from the local physical memory attached to that NUMA node.
Memory Considerations
Configure the value for virtual memory equal to the value of the Adaptive Server max memory configuration parameter.
Resource Management
vSphere advanced workload management features, such as VMware vMotion and VMware DRS, free Adaptive Server from the resource limitations of a single host.
Hardware-Assisted Memory Virtualization
Some processors address memory management unit (MMU) virtualization overhead by providing hardware support that virtualizes the MMU.
Linux Huge Pages
Linux huge pages can increase the efficiency of translation lookaside buffer access, improving database performance.
Networking
Sybase recommends that you use VMXNET 3 virtual network interface cards (NICs) for your Adaptive Server running on Windows virtual machines.
Storage
vSphere uses datastores to store virtual disks. Datastores provide an abstraction of the storage layer that hides the physical attributes of the storage devices from the virtual machines.