vSphere 5.0 New *.vswp file

Virtual Machine swap files have been around since the early ESX days and overtime we have learn how to play with Memory Reservations to constrain their maximum size and reduce storage footprint. This type of operation may not be as effective with server virtualization as it is with desktop virtualization.

The size of a .vswp file is equal to the memory size allocated to the VM, minus any assigned memory reservation. As an example, assume a virtual desktop with Windows 7 with2GB RAM, and 1GB memory reservation. In this case the .vswp file is 1GB.

As an example, in a deployment with 2,000 virtual desktops with 2GB RAM and 50% memory reservation the administrator would be able to save 1TB of storage footprint (2,000 x (2GB x 0.5) = 1TB).

The new *.VSWP file

ESxi 5.0 implements a second .vswp file for every virtual machine created either with hardware version 7 or 8. This second .vswp file is dedicated to memory overhead and will be used when the host is under resource constraint. When the virtual machine is created the memory overhead is defined, however the VM and the VMkernel will not use the whole reserved memory until required.

The total memory overhead is defined by the following factors:

• Number of virtual CPU
• Amount of RAM
• Amount of VRAM (defined by Number of Displays, Screen Resolution and Color Depth)
• 3D Support

Memory overhead is not something new and most VMware administrators were used to calculate overhead based on vCPU, RAM and VRAM. However, with the introduction of a Video memory Calculator, vSphere Client 5.0 provides an easy way to define the amount of VRAM required for a given video configuration.

vSphere 5.0 Features

When discussing vSphere 5.0 internally someone came up with the idea to list all new features that vSphere brings. Let me warn you that this is a long list, and the list could even be longer if we would have included all API changes and back-end changes.

Here we go:

1	Storage DRS
2	Storage I/O Control for NFS
3	VMFS-5
4	ESXi Firewall
5	VMFS Scalability and Performance enhancements
6	2TB+ pass-through RDM support
7	vCenter inventory extensibility
8	Storage APIs -- VAAI T10 Compliancy
9	Storage APIs -- VAAI Offloads for NAS
10	Storage APIs -- VAAI Thin Provisioning
11	Storage APIs -- Storage Awareness/Discovery
12	Storage APIs -- Data Protection compatible with MN
13	APD, Permanent APD Survivability Enablement
14	Snapshot enhancements
15	Storage vMotion scalability improvements
16	iSCSI Enablement: iSCSI UI Support
17	iSCSI Enablement: Stateless Support
18	Multi-queue Storage IO adapters
19	Increase NFSv3 Max Share Count to 256
20	SATA 3.0
21	Software FCoE initiator support
22	Enhanced logging support
23	Enhanced Storage metrics
24	Profile-Driven Storage
25	Storage vMotion support for snapshots
26	vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA)
27	SSD Detection and Enablement
28	vSphere Replication
29	vSphere Data Recovery 2.0
30	VADP enhancements
31	vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) Enhancements
32	vCO -- Library extension and consolidation
33	vCO -- vSphere Client integration
34	vCO -- Scalability
35	Network I/O Control (NIOC) Phase 2
36	NIOC -- User Defined Resource Pools
37	NIOC -- HBR traffic type
38	NIOC -- 802.1p tagging
39	Network Traffic Stats for iOPS
40	Improvement to UDP and Multicast traffic types
41	New networking drivers for server enablement
42	vDS support for Port mirror, LLDP and NetFlow V5
43	vDS Manage Port Group UI enhancement
44	Hot-Insert/Remove of Filters
45	Enhanced vMotion Compatibility
46	Storage vMotion support for Linked Clones
47	vMotion scalability (dual-NIC & longer latency support)
48	vNetwork API enhancements
49	vNetwork Opaque Channel
50	Support for 8 10GbE Physical NIC ports per host
51	Add Host Resources MIB to SNMP offering
52	Metro vMotion
53	Host Profile for DRS to support Stateless ESX
54	HA/DPM/DRS interop with agents VMs
55	DRS enhancements for Maintenance Mode
56	Enhanced processor support for FT
57	vSphere 5.0 HA aka "FDM / Fault Domain Manager"
58	vSphere HA - Heartbeat Datastores
59	vSphere HA - Support for partitions of management network
60	vSphere HA - Default isolation response changed
61	vSphere HA - New Status information in UI
62	vSphere HA - IPv6 support
63	vSphere HA - Application Awareness API publicly available
64	Extensions to create special icons for VMs
65	ESX Agent Management
66	Solution Management Plugin
67	Next-Gen vSphere Client
68	Host Profiles Enhancements
69	vCenter enhancements for stateless ESXi
70	vCenter Server Appliance
71	vCenter: Support for FileManager and VirtualDiskManager APIs
72	Virtual Hardware - Smartcard support for vSphere
73	Virtual Hardware Version 8
74	Virtual HW v8 -- 1TB VM RAM
75	Virtual HW v8 -- 32-way Virtual SMP
76	Virtual Hw v8 -- Client-Connected USB Devices
77	Virtual HW v8 -- EFI Virtual BIOS
78	Virtual HW v8 -- HD Audio
79	Virtual Hw v8 -- Multi-core Virtual CPU Support UI
80	Virtual HW v8 -- New virtual E1000 NIC
81	Virtual HW v8 -- UI and other support
82	Virtual HW v8 -- USB 3.0 device support
83	Virtual HW v8 -- VMCI device enhancements
84	Virtual HW v8 -- xHCI
85	Support SMP for Mac OS X guest OS
86	Universal Passthrough (VMdirect path with vMotion support)
87	Guest Management Operations (VIX API)
88	Guest OS Support -- Mac OS X Server
89	VM Serial Port to Host Serial Port Redirection (Serial Port Pass-Through)
90	Passthrough/SR-IOV
91	VMware Tools Portability
92	VMRC Concurrent Connections enhancements
93	Scalability: 512 VMs per host
94	ESXCLI enhancements
95	Support SAN and hw-iSCSI boot
96	Hardware -- Interlagos Processor Enablement
97	Hardware -- SandyBridge-DT Processor Enablement
98	Hardware -- SandyBridge-EN Processor Enablement
99	Hardware -- SandyBridge-EP Processor Enablement
100	Hardware -- Valencia Processor Enablement
101	Hardware -- Westmere-EX Processor Enablement
102	Platform -- CIM Enhancements
103	Platform -- ESX i18n support
104	Host Power Management Enhancements
105	Improved CPU scheduler
106	Improved scalability of CPU (NUMA) scheduler
107	Memory scheduler improvements to support 32-way VCPU's
108	Swap to host cache
109	API enhancements to configure VM boot order
110	VMX swap
111	Support for ESXi On Apple XServe
112	Redirect DCUI to host serial port for remote monitoring and management
113	UEFI BIOS Boot for ESXi hosts
114	Scalability -- 160 CPU Threads (logical PCPUs) per host
115	Scalability -- 2 TB RAM per host
116	Scalability -- 2048 VCPUs per host
117	Scalability -- 2048 virtual disks per host
118	Scalability -- 2048 VMs per VMFS volume
119	Scalability -- 512 VMs per host
120	Stateless -- Host Profile Engine and Host Profile Completeness
121	Stateless -- Image Builder
122	Stateless -- Auto Deploy
123	Stateless -- Networking Host Profile Plugin
124	Stateless -- VIB Packaging Enhancement
125	Stateless -- VMkernel network core dump
126	Host profiles enhancements for storage configuration
127	Enhanced driver support for ESXi
128	Intel TXT Support
129	Memsched policy enhancements w.r.t. Java balloon
130	Native Driver Autoload support
131	Root password entry screen in interactive installer
132	vCenter Dump Collector
133	vCenter Syslog Collector
134	VMware Update Manager (VUM) enhancements
135	VUM -- Virtual Appliance enhancements
136	VUM -- vApp Support
137	VUM -- Depot management enhancements
138	vCLI enhancements
139	PowerCLI enhancements
140	VProbes -- ESX Platform Observability