vSphere 6.7 U1 includes several enhancements in Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM) to significantly reduce CPU use and generate a much faster response time for compliance checking operations.
SPBM is a framework that allows vSphere users to translate their workload’s storage requirements into rules called storage policies. Users can apply storage policies to virtual machines (VMs) and virtual machine disks (VMDKs) using the vSphere Client or through the VMware Storage Policy API’s rich set of managed objects and methods. One such managed object is PbmComplianceManager. One of its methods, PbmCheckCompliance, helps users determine whether or not the storage policy attached to their VM is being honored.
PbmCheckCompliance is automatically invoked soon after provisioning operations such as creating, cloning, and relocating a VM. It is also automatically triggered in the background once every 8 hours to help keep the compliance records up-to-date.
In addition, users can invoke the method when checking compliance for a VM storage policy in the vSphere Client, or through the VMware Storage Policy API method PbmCheckCompliance.
We did a study in our lab to compare the performance of PbmCheckCompliance between vSphere 6.5 U2 and vSphere 6.7 U1. We present this comparison in the form of charts showing the latency (normalized on a 100-point scale) of PbmCheckCompliance for varying numbers of VMs.
The following chart compares the performance of PbmCheckCompliance on VMFS and vSAN environments.
As we see from the above chart, PbmCheckCompliance returns results much faster in vSphere 6.7 U1 compared to 6.5 U2. The improvement is seen across all inventory sizes and all datastore types and become more prominent for larger inventories and higher numbers of VMs.
The enhancements also positively impact a similar method, PbmCheckRollupCompliance. This method also returns the compliance status of VMs and adds compliance results for all disks associated with these VMs. The following chart represents the performance comparison of PbmCheckRollupCompliance on VMFS and vSAN environments.
Our experiments show that compliance check operations are significantly faster and more light-weight in vSphere 6.7 U1.