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.