VMware Communities: Message List - Altiris NS performance on ESXi Windows Server 2003 VM

Re: Altiris NS performance on ESXi Windows Server 2003 VM

joshrock11 — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:19:29 GMT

I checked the the HAL.dll and it says halmacpi.dll even after I tried to update the driver on the processor. Any other suggestions to getting this changed?

Re: Altiris NS performance on ESXi Windows Server 2003 VM

Dave.Mishchenko — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:04:25 GMT

Does the CPU usage in the VM show 100% use or is that from ESXi? You may want to check that the HAL is correct for a single vCPU VM.

From the above link

What should I do after I successfully convert my virtual machine?
If you change from a multi-processor system to a uni-processor system you need to manually change the HAL on the Windows server after the conversion. To do this go into Device Manager after the machine first boots and discovers it's new hardware and then click on Computer then right-click on the processor and select Update Driver. Then select Install from specific location and then Don't search I will choose the driver to install. Then select show All compatible hardware and select the appropriate processor. For example, if you went from a dual cpu to a single cpu then select ACPI uni-processor PC instead of ACPI multi-processor PC. You will need to reboot once you change this. To verify what HAL you are using you right-click your hal.dll in c:\windows\system32 and select the Version tab and select Internal Name and it should say halmacpi.dll for multi-processor acpi and halacpi.dll for uni-processor acpi. Next clean up all the non-present hardware after the P2V conversion. To do this go to a CMD prompt and type SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1 and then DEVMGMT.MSC and then select Show Hidden Devices. Delete any old grayed out hardware. Next remove any vendor specific applications/drivers. For example on a HP server you should go to Add/Remove programs and remove any HP management agents, survey utility, array config utility, version control agent, etc. Also check your NIC and make sure there are no vendor specific drivers there (ie. teaming). Check the Services to see if all there is anything vendor specific related there and disable any services that are.

Re: Altiris NS performance on ESXi Windows Server 2003 VM

joshrock11 — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:56:36 GMT

Its is setup 1 virtual processor and 3GB of RAM.

Re: Altiris NS performance on ESXi Windows Server 2003 VM

Dave.Mishchenko — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:35:15 GMT

Your discussion has been moved to the Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum.

Dave Mishchenko
VMware Communities User Moderator

Take a look at steps 7 and on for some things to do after a P2V - http://www.vmware-land.com/Converter.html. How is the VM setup (vCPU / memory)?

Altiris NS performance on ESXi Windows Server 2003 VM

joshrock11 — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:22:53 GMT

I converted a Dell PowerEdge 2850 Dual Proc 2.8GHz with 6GB running Windows 2003 Std. with Altiris Notification Server 7.0 on it. I created an image of the box and then converted it to an ESXi 3.5 U4 server. I have had horrible performance on the system since converting it and the processor is at 100% constantly and it is just doing desktop management of 60 hosts. Any thoughts or suggestions to help performance?