A similar copy outside of the VM on the host system is very fast (250MB SP install file copied in 5 secs). This I/O issue is isolated to the VM/Host interaction.
-bws
--
Brian W. Spolarich ~ Manager, Information Services ~ Advanced Photonix / Picometrix
   Â
bspolarich@... ~ 734-864-5618 ~ www.advancedphotonix.com
-----Original Message-----
From:
vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:
vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Brian W. Spolarich
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 3:52 PM
To:
vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Re: Somewhat OT: VMWare Peformance for SP Testing
Thanks. I did some tweaking in the config of the VM, cut the CPUs to one, but I'm getting *AWFUL* I/O performance even from the local disks (i.e. copying a 3GB file from the Desktop to the Desktop was going to take 20mins, with 50% System CPU usage, copying the 250MB SP Installer file from the host server into the VM disk was going to take two hours, etc.)
Right now it is completely unusable. The VM guest boots just fine, I can log onto it remotely, etc. But anything resembling I/O to the disks is slower than molasses. Trying to run the SP installer is going to take several hours.
Ideas? I would expect performance degradation, but this is just unusable.
-bws
--
Brian W. Spolarich ~ Manager, Information Services ~ Advanced Photonix / Picometrix
   Â
bspolarich@... ~ 734-864-5618 ~ www.advancedphotonix.com
-----Original Message-----
From:
vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:
vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of too_much_hg
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 3:43 PM
To:
vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Re: Somewhat OT: VMWare Peformance for SP Testing
A couple things that will kill your performance are :
1. The Free VMware Server product runs on TOP of Windows and the performance doesn't come close to what you would get if you were running VM ESXi directly on the Hardware.
2. RAID 5 is not so great for Write Performance and is likely causing some performance degradation.
If your Host Windows Server is not X64 or Enterprise you won't be able to use memory over 4GB anyway.
If you plan to invest in some RAID 10 hardware you might think about purchasing a Server with ESXi embedded and put your drives in that.
Be sure to leverage BOTH Channels of your RAID Controller if you plan to setup RAID 10.
I also think you should read this information about Partition alignment, NOTICE that Microsoft is indicating a 20+% performance hit.
Don't be fooled by the SQL Server title, this is a MUST READ for ALL Windows Server Admins !
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd758814.aspx
I used Vizioncore vConverter to create a "Replica" of my X64 Production Server into VMware ESX3.x and it works very well.
I then "Cloned" this Replica thru VMware, renamed/changed IP/re-joined domain, tweak some settings in Epicor files/shortcuts and now I have an exact copy for my VM TEST environment.
vConverter has the nice feature that it will keep my "Replica" current with scheduled "bit change replications" as a DR feature.
If my Physical Server ever goes Post Tostie I can spin up my VMware Replica and run out of my Virtual Environment until the Physical Server is back online and then copy the Database from VM to Physical and spin my VMware back down.
Regards,
Neil
--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "Brian W. Spolarich " <bspolarich@...> wrote:
>
> I made a physical-to-virtual copy of my production environment (W2K3
> R2 x64) a while back to give me a good platform for testing (as similar
> as possible to the production environment being my goal).
>
>
>
> I've deployed it on my network management server, which has a big
> RAID5 array for backup-to-disk needs running under the (free) VMWare
> Server product.
>
>
>
> Performance is really terrible and I think it's mostly I/O. The
> virtual machine has 3GB of memory allocated to it and its using half of
> that, and the parent OS has plenty of available memory. I see some
> I'm planning picking up some more memory and some dedicated RAID0 disk
> for it. I'm wondering if folks have similar experiences (really slow VM
> performance on RAID5 volumes), or if there are other things I can do to
> speed things up (get rid of swap, etc.)
>
>
>
> Basically I'm dubious if the performance of the test environment I
> have now will be suitable for running the conversions much less
> supporting interactive user testing, and the alternatives require me to
> buy new hardware. If I can avoid that expense that would be best, and
> it would delay my testing.
>
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
>
> -brian
>
>
>
> --
>
> Brian W. Spolarich ~ Manager, Information Services ~ Advanced Photonix /
> Picometrix
>
> bspolarich@...
> <mailto:bspolarich@...> ~ 734-864-5618 ~
> www.advancedphotonix.com <http://www.advancedphotonix.com>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
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