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minixar
Contributor
Contributor

Dell PowerEdge 2950 Disk Performance

Hi! I recently installed a Dell Power Edge 2950 server with the Vmware ESXi. I installed two virtual machine, one with Windows 2003 server and the other with RedHat Enterprise 5. During the installation process I noticed that the disk performance was poor. After the installation I made a simple test performance moving two files inside virtual machines hard disk and this is the result:

Windows 2003 Server -> 2,6GB -> 2:15 minutes

Linux -> 3,8GB -> 6 minutes

I attached a screenshot with the performance monitor from the vmware esxi.

Is this a normal performance for this kind of hardware? Is it possible to increase this rate?

Thanks!

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jasonlitka
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

So... You've got 8 CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, and only 1 hard drive? That's not a good start for solid disk performance, nor is copying a file with the source and destination drives identical.

To be blunt, there's really no way that you're going to get decent multi-VM performance with a single drive. You're going to need to buy some more hardware.

Jason Litka

Jason Litka http://www.jasonlitka.com
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s1xth
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

You ONE SINGLE 15K drive installed??? How? Why? Maybe you mean you HAVE 15k SAS drives. If that is WHAT you mean, what kind of raid is this? 5? 10?

I have 7 2950's in production running everything from SQL to simple print servers to backend processing servers with no issues nor any drive performance issues.

http://www.virtualizationimpact.com http://www.handsonvirtualization.com Twitter: @jfranconi
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minixar
Contributor
Contributor

Yes, only ONE sas drive. The company bought it with this configuration and meanwhile i can't change it. Is this a normal performance? Is there any drivers to install in the guest operating system to improve performance?

Thanks!

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s1xth
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Well with ONE SINGLE SAS drive on ANY machine is going to be BAD performance. Trust me on that. Only way you are going to fix the performance is adding more drives.

http://www.virtualizationimpact.com http://www.handsonvirtualization.com Twitter: @jfranconi
jasonlitka
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

For 1 hard drive, copying data to itself, that's about normal. You're going to need more hardware.

In the future, don't let other people buy systems for your projects. I had a similar issue a few years back because my boss assumed that the only thing you needed to consider about hard drives was storage space.

Jason Litka

Jason Litka http://www.jasonlitka.com
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Catemaco
Contributor
Contributor

I also have an issue with virtual disk performance on a Dell PowerEdge 2950, and I have two separate RAID arrays. I'm going to open a separate ticket.

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s1xth
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Two separate partitions? Details? Type / size / speed of hard drives?? Latest Firmware/Bios on everything? What version of ESXi? What type of controller...Perc 6/SAS6?

Again, as I posted above I have 7 of these machines IN PRODUCTION with heavy load and never have any issues. (my config on all machines: RAID5 15k 300GB drives x6 Backplane Perc6/SAS6)

http://www.virtualizationimpact.com http://www.handsonvirtualization.com Twitter: @jfranconi
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