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patrickgruber
Contributor
Contributor

Ubuntu 9.04 on ESX4i - poor network performance after a while

Hello!

I've got a problem with an virtual NAS I built on an ESX4i under Ubuntu 9.04 (x86).

Hardware: Homebuilt PC (Asus MB/AMD 5050e/8GB RAM/Dell Perc 5i Controller with 4 Samsung 1TB HDDs (RAID5)/onboard NIC and additional Intel PRO/1000MT)

Did a minimal install of Ubuntu with NFS-Kernel-Server and Samba.

After switching on the VM, I get a Samba Performance of about 70 to 80 MB/s reading. NFS is somewhere in this range.

But after 3 minutes or so, the performance drops down to about 3MB/s. Rebooting theVM does not help. Only shutting it down and switching it on again. (The VM! not the ESX-Server)

I only have this Problem with this Linux-Machine. No problems at all with neither my Windows 2008 x64 and Windows 2003 x86/x64 servers nor the XP-Client x86. All VMs on the same ESX.

VMWare-Tools are installed.

Very annoying as this is my Fileserver.

Tried it on onboard NIC and Intel NIC. The same. Tried another switch. The same.

Someone has an idea?

Thanks,

Patrick

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J1mbo
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Do you have the BBWC on the controller?

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patrickgruber
Contributor
Contributor

Yes, the BBWC is installed. I don't think, this is a harddisk-related problem, as my Windows-Hosts perform very well.

Also, a local test on theVM for the diskspeed with dd shows very good performance. >200MB/s stable read.

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J1mbo
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

OK, what's the overall RAM usage on the box? And is this VM operating comfortably within any resource pool restrictions placed on it?

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patrickgruber
Contributor
Contributor

RAM: 8GB

Overall Usage: 7081MB

RAM-Usage VM: 204MB

I did not tried a ressource pool.

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J1mbo
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I've personally noticed performance degrade (massively) once I get to 7GB on an 8GB host - maybe free up some more RAM (i.e. shut down other VMs temporarily) and re-run the test?

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