Huge pages (known as large pages in Windows) can improve performance for some workloads. VMware Integrated OpenStack supports a maximum page size of 1 GB.

Prerequisites

Verify that your deployment is running on vSphere 6.7 or later.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the VMware Integrated OpenStack dashboard as a cloud administrator.
  2. Select the admin project from the drop-down menu in the title bar.
  3. Configure a flavor for huge page support.
    1. Select Admin > Compute > Flavors.
    2. Create a new flavor or choose an existing flavor to use for instances with huge page support.
    3. Select Update Metadata next to the flavor that you want to use.
    4. In the Available Metadata pane, expand Guest Memory Backing and click the Add (plus sign) icon next to Size of memory page.
    5. Set the value of hw:mem_page_size to large.
      Alternatively, you can enter a specific value with a unit suffix (for example, 2MB or 1GB.)
    6. In the Available Metadata pane, expand VMware Quota and click the Add (plus sign) icon next to Quota: Memory Reservation in Percentage.
    7. Set the value of quota:memory_reservation_percent to 100 and click Save.
  4. Configure an image for huge page support.
    1. Select Admin > Compute > Images.
    2. Create a new image or choose an existing image to use for instances with huge page support.
    3. Select Update Metadata next to the image that you want to use.
    4. In the Available Metadata pane, expand Guest Memory Backing and click the Add (plus sign) icon next to Size of memory page.
    5. Set the value of hw_mem_page_size to large.
      Alternatively, you can enter a specific value with a unit suffix (for example, 2MB or 1GB.)
    6. In the Available Metadata pane, expand VMware Quota and click the Add (plus sign) icon next to Quota: Memory Reservation in Percentage.
    7. Set the value of quota_memory_reservation_percent to 100 and click Save.
  5. Launch an OpenStack instance using the flavor and image created in this procedure.
    For instructions, see Launch an Instance.
  6. Log in to the guest operating system of the instance and enable huge page support.
    For instructions, see the documentation for your guest operating system.