How to get best performance?

[Nidhin9]

I have a Core 2 Duo E6300 with 8 GB of RAM and 4 HDDs. I need to run multiple operating systems , ranging from Windows 2000 Pro to 2008 Datcenter, upto 4 at a time, inside VMWare workstaion. Since my OS (Windows XP 32 bit) cant take advantage of the 8 GB RAM i think its best to switch to another Windows OS (2003 Server Enterprise / XP 64 bit / Windows 7 64 bit). I have heard 32 bit apps have got a slight performance hit when running in 64 bit OS.

I have read in a forum that VMWare.exe runs in 32 bit mode and vmware-vmx.exe runs in 64 bit mode. Does that mean VMWare can take advantage of the 64 bit OS and VMWare.exe is just a GUI to the virtual machine? What you people think is the best option? ( I need to use VMWare workstion. i cant use other VMWare products)

[sk55]

Do you plan to run SQL Server or Exchange on those VMs? If you search the forums people have had problems running those type of VMs in workstation. If you plan to run multiple server guest i would just go with esxi. Maybe just setup a whitebox if your budget is tight. Windows is just bad host for multiple server guests: autoupdate wants to run, resource hog, etc.

If your using windows as a host, its using a bunch of memory, handles, cpu from the start. Your only option is to run 64 bit OS on the host. 32bit host you will run out of handles and memory.

Don't thin provision your guest, just allocate all the drive space they need. (Server OS crawl with thin provisioning on workstation)

Try to only use 1 core per guest.

Keep us posted with your results.

[continuum]

sk55 - why do you promote ESX when the user says he wants to stick to Workstation ?

Nidhin9 - you are right. Next step to do is to install one of those OS from your list.

Personally I thing 2003 Enterprise would give you the best performance but YMMV.

Don't worry about this

> I have heard 32 bit apps have got a slight performance hit when running in 64 bit OS.

All this side effects will make no difference compared to the performance boost you get by using the 8 Gb RAM

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VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

[Nidhin9]

Yes, I will be running both SQL Server and Exchange Server, but will be having only the <5 database, with ❤️ users connected on SQL server and <10 mailboxes with <5 users connected on exchange server. At present i have both running in multiple 2003 Servers inside VMware. 4 Exchange servers in 2 Front-end back-end config and 2 SQL servers in 2 node cluster config. Works perfect. The SQL/ Exchange servers will be under low work load only. Host OS and virtual Servers are welll tweaked and well managed. Parellel access to 4 HDDs and 8 GB of RAM helps a lot. But now i want migrate some virtual machine to 2008/Vista/7. So i think i will go for Xeon based server with 16 GB RAM with ESX. Before that i wanted to have expert's opinion and i will do a test run on the current hardware with VMWare workstation. I will post the results within 2 weeks as i currently busy with other stuff. Thank you.

[Nidhin9]

Thanks Continuum for the advice. I will be doing a test run on the current hardware. Will post the results in 2 weeks. Thank you.

[sk55]

Continuum - I am not promoting anything. I actually like windows more than linux. I merely stating that it would be best practice/(and from personal experience playing with workstation) to use esx.

If I was playing with a fileserver okay, however sql servers and exchange servers are typically resource intensive.

>Nidhin9 Yes, I will be running both SQL Server and Exchange Server

>All this side effects will make no difference compared to the performance boost you get by using the 8 Gb RAM

Exchange Servers and Sql Servers are typically limited by disk performance. I can see 2 exchange servers easily eat 8 gig of ram. You’ll get a much better performance boost with a few raid 10 arrays.

Typically you want sql servers running as fast as possible to avoid locking issues, deadlocks. Running sql server in vmware workstation vs. esxi/esx, the performance difference is night and day.

[Nidhin9]

The Exchange and SQL servers are not production servers and are used for testing purpouse only (applications, migration,upgradation etc). So they are nearly under no load. I cant go for a RAID solution owing to the limitation of hardware, the motherboard. The only thing available is custom builld SAN and its too slow.

[Nidhin9]

Friends i have been assigned to another project, with the current on hold. So i will be updating this thread as soon as i get back to old one. Thanks for your patience.