Advanced configuration of VMs on ESXi

On the Abiquo platform, you can easily perform the following configuration of VMs on ESXI using the Abiquo UI or API:

vCPU hotplug: enable hot-add disks for the VM template
use VMXNET3: select the NIC driver for the template
configure dedicated CPU resources
configure dedicated memory resources
Use Eagerzeroedthick virtual disks for data and log disk: edit the disks and select the EAGER_ZERO_THICK allocation type

For more details, see Modify a VM template.

This page describes how to set further advanced configuration for VMs on ESXi.

An example VM configuration could be as follows.

numa.vcpu.preferHT = TRUE (no default)
CPU/MMU Virtualization Option = automatic
halt_in_monitor = TRUE (no default)
idleLoopSpinBeforeHalt = TRUE (no default)
sched.cpu.latencySensitivity = normal (default)
tools.guestlib.enableHostInfo = FALSE (default)
sched.swap.vmxswapenabled = TRUE (no default)
hw version=14 (the newest version will be installed when deploying a new VM)
ethernetX.coalescingScheme = disable (no default)

You can set the configuration with VM variables before deploy only

To set advanced configuration for VMs:

On the Remote Services server, edit the abiquo.properties file
1. For each configuration element, set a property with a key and the variable for the configuration with the following format:
  com.abiquo.esx.variable.variableKey.esx.property.name=ESXIvalue
To activate the configuration, in Abiquo, edit a VM template or a VM
1. Go to Variables and add a variable with the key variableKey from the abiquo.properties and a non-empty value.
  "variableKey":"non-empty-value"
  For the non-empty value, we recommend that you use the value in ESXi (ESXivalue)

Example 1

To let users work with VMX swap, set the variableKey = schedwapen and the esx.property to sched.swap.vmxswapenabled. Set a value of TRUE.

Then in the Abiquo, edit the VM template or the VM, and set the following variable

Abiquo will now configure VMs with sched.swap.vmxswapenabled set to TRUE.

Example 2

To set ethernet.coalescingScheme to disable for all NICs, you can use an X to represent all NICs.

So, in abiquo.properties, you could set the following property, with the variableKey of ethxcoalsch.

Then in VM template or VM, add a variable, as follows.

The resulting configuration of the VM in the hypervisor will be as follows.