18 June, 2014

Improve vSphere Webclient performance

Several other blogs have posted ways to improve the speed and responsiveness of the vSphere webclient. I was browsing through the different blogs post in addition to the official VMware installation and migration documentation and Knowledge Base articles, while writing a Migration Plan.
This Migration Plan must guide a customer through the replacement of vCenter and upgrade of ESXi hosts, both need to get to vSphere 5.5.
Grabbing the different adjustments to improve the speed and responsiveness of the vSphere webclient, was not that difficult but it became clear that there is one single place that has the complete list (at least I didn't find it).
So I thought to write a post with all changes that improve the "look and feel" of the vSphere webclient that I know of.
Let's get started, changes to the JVM settings of various vCenter components are the ones that make the biggest improvement.

VirtualCenter Management WebServices
Configuration file location:
installation_directory\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\conf\wrapper.conf
Heap size parameter:
wrapper.java.additional.9="-Xmxheap_3072M"

vCenter Inventory Service
Configuration file location:
installation_directory\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\conf\wrapper.conf
Heap size parameter:
# Maximum Java Heap Size (in MB)
wrapper.java.maxmemory=12288

vSphere Profile-Driven Storage
Configuration file location:
installation_directory\VMware\Infrastructure\Profile-Driven Storage\conf\wrapper.conf
Heap size parameter:
# Maximum Java Heap Size (in MB)
wrapper.java.maxmemory=2048

vSphere Web Client
Configuration file location:
installation_directory\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphereWebClient\server\bin\service\conf\wrapper.conf
Heap size parameter:
########
# JVM Memory
########
wrapper.java.maxmemory=3072

Some other changes to the vSphere Web Client, which improve the usage of the webclient by changing for instance the page timeout and disabling the animations within the webclient.
The list of things I would change you find below, but please keep in mind that the settings may differ for your or your customers' environment, Please adjust accordingly !

vSphere Web Client
Configuration file location:
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\vSphere Web Client\webclient.properties
session.timeout = 0
navigator.disableAnimation = true
refresh.rate = 600
feature.facetedSearch.enabled = true

If you have read this post and find there is a update of modification missing please leave a comment and I will review it and update the post.