exchange 2007 VM settings

[medic29]

Hello,

I have a nice little testing domain setup for myself using ESXi 3.5 So far everything is working quite well, but... Most of my VMs are W2K8 64 bit and when trying to administer them using either the client console or a program like dameware, the general performance desktop experience ranges from light to severly slow. The one VM that I notice the most is the Exchange 2007. I usually am on it every other day tinkering with various settings. Whenever I try and log in there is always a considerable lag. Client access wise, in comparison to non VM setup, is the same. Outlook access is quite zippy J

If I remember correctly, my physical E2K7 box pretty much mirrored the settings below in terms of ram and CPU specs (x64) On that server, when logging on locally or over dameware the lag was very minimal if any.

Anyway, since this is my test domain I don't really have anybody else connecting to it, so I figured my general system settings would be a bit lower than the recommended performance settings. Here they are:

Actual physical ESXi server

32GB Ram

2x 500GB HD

2x 3.2Ghz Xeons /w VT tech (Precision 490)

Exchange VM

6048MB Ram

2 CPUs

80GB HD

Even though the Host mem is set at 6GB the Guest mem usually only sits around the 10-20% range. CPU wise, unless I'm watching it during startup, general runtime never goes over the 1500Mhz area.

If anybody could offer some advice as to what settings I should be running given my current limited usage. Or, if everything looks ok, why there might be such a lag when working on the actual VM. As I mentioned above, actual connectivity (not only with E2K7) is quite fine.

Thanks!

[jozsef]

Hi Medic

Does not sound like exchange is the problem here.

Have you got the latest VMtools installed on the vm?

Disabled mouse pointer shadow in the vm and set the display options as recommended?

Check that the service console network settings for esx are full duplex and the switches and nics are set as they should be. Your vi client connect through this.

Joe

[medic29]

I did see that the hardware accel settings were not full tilt and I adjusted them. I also bumped the memory up 2GB more. I see a bit of difference.

I guess the real question is when running an OS on vmware given my server specs listed above, what do people expect the desktop experience to be like?

After tweaking the settings for the E2K7 server, whether I connect via vmware client or dameware I still have a slight screen delay (click on the start menu and it kind of scrolls the menu down instead of it instantly appearing.) This type of lag is seen in just about any screen I try to bring up, but I wasn't sure if the general load (physical or virtual) usually tag the performance down enough so this is always seen.

This certainly isn't stopping me from doing anything, just more of a curiosity.

[jozsef]

Hi Medic

I run over 200 VMs with some serious processing required in MS back office apps. No Lag on any VM regardless of operating system. When I have had problems with consoles it has been down to the settings mentioned already. I run x64 and 32 with mail systems and SQL, etc, all on SAN disks.

In short - No lag - via VM console, Web access or RDP.

You dont mention if the system is local disks or SAN. It is likely the disk subsystem just simply cannot handle the IO of multiple VMs - most common with local disk system. 2 local disks sound a little under spec for multiple vm environments. This is likely why you are noticing lag across all VMs.

Perhaps it is worth shutting down all VMs except 1 low resouce vm and see if that helps.

By the way - I have observed particulary with Exchange that giving the system far more resources than required does actually harm performance. Give it only what it needs.

The rest of the specs seem to be fine.

Regards

Joe

[medic29]

Thanks for the info on possible storage issues. I knew having a simple dual drive setup was pretty far under par for a production server but was hoping in my little lab it wouldn't make much difference.

I'll try and tinker with it more and see where I get. I have my sights on a few ebay items which may allow me to build a rather inexpensive SAN array, but we'll see.

Thanks!

[medic29]

Since this was more of an advice post I'm closing it after people pointed out a few things to try.