ESX 3.5 u3 very slow disk write performance

[Merlothun]

Hi everyone!

Here's our problem:

We hava a brand new server with esx3.5 u3 with the following components:

-MB: Intel S3210SHLC

-CPU: Xeon 3110

-mem: 6 GB DDR800 ECC

-RAID controller: LSISAS3041E-R

-HDD: 2x500 GB Seagate SATA2 16 cache (local RAID1)

We tested the performances:

virtual win XP

read write

network file copy with a physical host (booth Gb) 50 MB/s 6MB/s

server bare metal speed

read write

knoppx live CD, command dd 130 MB/s 130 MB/s

win2003 server (not virtual) network file copy 75 MB/s 65 MB/s

knoppx live CD, iperf with physical host (through Gb) 750 Mbps

So the problem is, that the one XP VM under ESX have very poor disk write speed. Compared with the bare metal performaces I can't understand, what can be the problem.

I read a lot of KBs, forums without luck.

Did anybody met something like this?

I appreciate any ideas.

Thanks in advance!

ps: we tried XenServer 5 too, we experienced the same performance problem..

[Merlothun]

Unbelievable, we managed the problem, what I wrote before. There's a great forum (http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/customize_oem_tgz.php), that helps us.

Now we have a live ESXi server which boots from 1 GB pendrive and the Datastore's are local SATA hdd's connected to the MB SATA controller (no need for RAID controllers) and the ESXi now sees the 2nd more faster NIC (82566DM-2).

So there's possible to give easy to ESXi some unsupported drivers and devices, which works perfectly.

The performance, what we measured now with local SATA drives is cooool: XP VM's write perf 40-45 MBps, read 50 MBps:-)

But when we connect our LSI3041E RAID controller and create SATA RAID1 and Datastsore on ESX, the wrie performance is the same slow (6 MBps). So I guess, the LSI RAID controller is the faulty... But theres's no need it any more, the link above helped us, a lot of brightness are there.

[Merlothun]

Closed due to expiration.

[Merlothun]

Closed due to expiration.