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Guest Performance in ESX 3.5

I have a HP BL460c with 2-quadcore 3Ghz CPU, 22GB RAM and running VMWare ESX Server ,3.5.0,70356. I am running 6 Guests on this host.

GUESTA01 Windows 2003 Std(32bit) 1-vCPU 1024MB RAM

GUESTA02 Windows 2003 Std(32bit) 2-vCPU 4096MB RAM

GUESTF01 Windows Vista(64bit) 1-vCPU 1024MB RAM

GUESTT01 Windows Vista(32bit) 4-vCPU 4096MB RAM

GUESTT02 Windows 2003 Std(32bit) 2-vCPU 4096MB RAM

GUESTT04 Windows Vista(32bit) 1-vCPU 2048MB RAM

The server is not being heavily utilized (see attached file)I have attached a performance chart from the past day. The guests are normally inactive except for between 11:00AM and 4:00PM.

O.K now that you know my life story, how can I optimize the performance of GUESTT02. This guest is running Microsoft Terminal Services (multi-threaded application) and a single threaded application that is our own software (we are a software development company). I want to utilize VMware more but I am being told that GUESTT02 is extremely slow.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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heybuzzz
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Q:3) 7-10 but again this is just the beginning we expect more in the near future.

I had two VM TS on 3.0.1 2vCPU and 4 Gigs of RAM that usually have 50-80 user on them all day. The server is a BL 45 G1 and has 2 dual core CPU's with 16 gigs of RAM. We had pretty good success with 15 Apps on the server (up and running for almost 2 years), but after adding a print intensive application called FormsFast it basically turned it into a print server and killed it. Went physical and to Citrix....

I'd def stay away from ANY vCPUs UNLESS you know the App/Server can use them....my two cents

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Dave_Mishchenko
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The XLS puts out an error when opening due to missing htm files. A few questions

1) how is the load on the other servers during this time?

2) Have you tried GUESTT02 with one vCPU? This is a better starting point for Terminal Services / Citrix.

3) How many users are you trying to support on the TS server?

4) What is GUESTT02 reporting (CPU / memory / disk) during the slowness?

5) Do the other guests need to be running during 11 - 4? Just as a test, I'm wondering what the performance would be like with just the TS running. I also work for an application vendor and one of our prior versions had a bit of a problem running on TS VM as well. The problem was with very slow load times compared to bare metal and it was due to the way the app was handling memory.

I would also suggest not using vSMP unless the VM really needs it - for example your 4 vCPU Vista VM. Not that's it's necessarily a problem on your host, but many VMs with multiple vCPUs can lead to performance issues especially as the host gets busy.

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heybuzzz
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How many user are hitting your TS at any one time?

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kjb007
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I agree with Dave, try to bump the VM down to 1 vCPU. Did you create this server as a 2 vCPU guest, or was it a clone of the 1 vCPU build?

-KjB

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
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Prost
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Thanks for the response

Let me start by adding I talked to VMware support and they helped me understand how ESX uses/distributes CPU. With a dual quad core CPU I was told I should never use 4 vCPUs unless absolutely needed. He said I may get better performance from 1 CPU than I would 4 vCPUs. I am sure you already know and correct me if I am wrong that you should start with 1 vCPU and if performance shows a high vCPU usage to control it first by using resource groups to reserve CPU for the guest. Then if you still have a performance issue to give it 2 CPUs. Multi-threaded applications may show better performance with 1 vCPU depending on the ESX host environment.

Enough about that

Q:1) During 11:00 and 4:00 the other servers are inactive but running. This environment is in the stages of being built.

Q:2) No but am scheduling time to lower the CPU (on all the guests) as we speek.

Q:3) 7-10 but again this is just the beginning we expect more in the near future.

Q:4) About 50% CPU usage and 10% of guest RAM

Q:5)The the other guest support the application and are needed.

I am going to try and post the guest CPU usage report.

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heybuzzz
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Q:3) 7-10 but again this is just the beginning we expect more in the near future.

I had two VM TS on 3.0.1 2vCPU and 4 Gigs of RAM that usually have 50-80 user on them all day. The server is a BL 45 G1 and has 2 dual core CPU's with 16 gigs of RAM. We had pretty good success with 15 Apps on the server (up and running for almost 2 years), but after adding a print intensive application called FormsFast it basically turned it into a print server and killed it. Went physical and to Citrix....

I'd def stay away from ANY vCPUs UNLESS you know the App/Server can use them....my two cents

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oreeh
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FYI: this thread has been moved to the Performance Forum.

Oliver Reeh[/i]

[VMware Communities User Moderator|http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-2444][/i]

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larstr
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Have you also tried to add the setting workload = TerminalServices[/url] to your TS VM?

Lars

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