1. Update Hardware
Updating hardware by swamping old technology with new one is obvious step in optimizing your virtual machine. But this time this refers to updating BIOS of your hardware. That may help you avoid any unnecessary downtime and can prevent any security breaches.
2. Full Licenses
This may not necessary change how well your machine will work but by purchasing full licenses can unlock features that are not available in free versions.
3. Separate Network
You should always keep in mind that virtual machines can use big portion of your network therefore you should create a separate network just for this matter.
4. Separate Disk Images
Usually when you create multiple virtual disks for one virtual machine, all those disks are keep together on the same disk array. If you will keep them separate it will result in faster disk response.
5. Limit vCPUs
This may sound a little bit odd but in real life scenarios limiting number of virtual processors available for use for VM can increase its performance. It is that its decreases wait time for host resources.
6. Thin Provisioning
It is always a good idea to use thin provisioning on storage. It will result in more efficient storage utilization and will move all processing related with storage away from the virtual infrastructure.
7. Separate Service Levels
Again, this it’s obvious but not everyone do it. You should separate your VM service levels. This should be done logically and physically so each environment differs from each other.
8. Virtual Machine Names
Sounds so simple yet so effective. If you will use logical VM instead of for example VMW7SP01, VMW7SR01, VMW7SS01 it will be a lot easier to manage them and administrators won't make any mistakes while patching or repairing them.
9. Templates
Using templates can easily increase efficiently while creating new VM. It will speed up the whole process of creating new VM significantly and will also save time on patching or installing software.
10. Host Profiles
Mainly used in VMware, is a concept of host profiles. Using those profiles an administrator can setup host system more efficiently and will greater consistency.
Hopefully all those tips will help you to optimize your VM and increase its overall performance.
Source
http://goo.gl/40qTh