Configuration File Options

VMware ESX Server 2.1
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You may edit the configuration file using a text editor on the service console or through the management interface.

To edit configurations parameters in the management interface, complete the following steps.

Click the arrow to the right of the terminal icon and select Configure Options in the Virtual Machine menu.
In the Options page, in the Verbose Options section, click click here.
Click Add to add a new configuration parameter or click in the text field to edit an existing parameter.
Click OK.

If you edit a virtual machine's configuration file by hand, use the following formats to control disk bandwidth allocation for the virtual machine.

scsi0:1.name = <fsname>:<diskname>.dsk

This is the standard format for specifying the VMFS file underlying a virtual disk.

sched.scsi0:1.shares = n

This configuration option specifies the initial disk bandwidth share allocation for a virtual machine for the disk scsi0:1 to be n shares. The valid range of numerical values for n is 1 to 100000. You may also use the special values low, normal and high. These values are automatically converted into numbers, through the configuration options DiskSharesLow, DiskSharesNormal and DiskSharesHigh, described in the next section. If the number of shares for a disk is not specified, the assigned allocation is normal, with a default value of 1000 shares.

Note: It is possible for a configuration file to have multiple lines specifying the number of shares. If this happens, the last value specified is used.

Configuration File Examples

scsi0.virtualdev = vmxbuslogic scsi0:1.present = TRUE scsi0:1.name = vmhba0:2:0:5:rh6.2.dsk scsi0:1.mode = persistent sched.scsi0:1.shares = high

scsi0:2.present = TRUE scsi0:2.name = scratchfs:scratch1.dsk sched.scsi0:2.shares = 800

In the example above, the first four lines in the first group and the first two lines in the second group are present in the configuration file before you make your changes. The final line in each group is the added line to specify the disk bandwidth allocation.

Managing Disk Bandwidth from the Service Console

Use the following guidelines for the service console commands to monitor and manage allocation of disk bandwidth on an ESX Server computer.

/proc/vmware/vm/<id>/disk/vmhba<x:y:z>

Reading from this file reports the number of disk bandwidth shares allocated to the virtual machine identified by <id> for the disk identified by vmhba<x:y:z>. It also reports disk usage statistics.

Writing a number <n> to this file changes the number of disk bandwidth shares allocated to the virtual machine identified by <id> to <n>. The valid range of values for <n> is 0 to 100000. Or, you may use the special values low, normal and high. These values are automatically converted into numbers, through the configuration options DiskSharesLow, DiskSharesNormal and DiskSharesHigh, described in this section.

/proc/vmware/config/DiskSchedNumReqOutstandingThis option specifies the number of outstanding commands allowed to a disk when there are multiple virtual machines competing for bandwidth. The default value is 16; the valid range of numeric values is from 1 to 256. Note that selecting a number larger than 16 may affect the ability of ESX Server to provide fair allocation of disk bandwidth.

/proc/vmware/config/DiskSchedQuantumThis option specifies the number of sequential requests that a virtual machines may issue to a disk, without being preempted by another virtual machine. The default value is 8; the valid range of numeric values is from 1 to 64.

/proc/vmware/config/DiskSharesLowThis option specifies the a numerical value for the low shares value. By default, this number is 500.

/proc/vmware/config/DiskSharesNormalThis option specifies the a numerical value for the normal shares value. By default, this number is 1000.

/proc/vmware/config/DiskSharesHighThis option specifies the a numerical value for the high shares value. By default, this number is 2000.

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