VMware just published a new wonderful 23-pages paper on ESX Server 2.x on how to benchmark VMs performances and apply different resources allocation methods.
It covers the following topics:
- Virtual Machine Scalability
- Virtual Versus Native Scaling
- Limiting CPU Resources via Maximums
- Garanteeing CPU Resources via Minimums
- Allocating CPU Resources via Shares
- Setting CPU Affinity
- Page Sharing
Download it here.