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.

New Fling from VMwareLABS called "VisualEsxtop"

Most of the Fling's coming from VMwareLABS are worth trying and every once in a while there is a Fling that is really cool and above all useful (like InventorySnapshot I wrote a post on a while back), just a couple of days ago some of the engineers from the VMware performance group release VisualEsxtop.
The name says it all, it is a graphical version of esxtop which can be run on Microsoft OS, Linux OS and on Mac OS** so it is really "cross-platform".
It works remotely and can be run on any computer which has network access to ESX(i) host or vCenter (although I haven't been able to connect it to a vCenter successfully).

When you run it, it looks like a enhanced version of esxtop

It will color coat important counters and issues automatically. Further more it has the ability to record and playback batch output, it can create line charts for selected counters and it has counter descriptions when you "mouse-over" them.

To download this Fling, which I recommend as it is a very useful tool to have please go to VMwareLABS

** As said before it is cross-platform, but to get it to run on Mac OS you need to take some extra steps. For details on how to do this please read How to Run VMware's New Fling VisualEsxtop on Mac OS X from the virtuallyGhetto blog of William Lam