BIOS Settings for Intel Virtualization Technology

[scord]

I just received a new Dell Precision T3500 Workstation as a new VMWare Test platform.

Upon looking at the BIOS (A01), I noticed the following area relating to Virtualization Support. Both of these settings were set to "Disabled" by default.

Can setting these to "Enabled" enhance VMWare Workstation v6.5.2 in running faster?

Virtualization Category in BIOS:

Virtualization: Disabled

This setting specifies whether a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) can utilize the additional hardware capabilities provided by INTEL Virtualization Technology

- Possible settings are either Enabled or Disabled

Virtualization for Direct I/O: Disabled

This setting specifies whether a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) can utilize the additional hardware capabilities provided by INTEL Virtualization Technology for Direct I/O

- Possible settings are either Enabled or Disabled

[admin]

You will have to enable VT if you want to run 64-bit guests. See KB 1901.

For 32-bit guests, the relative performance of VT and binary translation depends on both the CPU generation and the particular guest. For a discussion of the relative merits of the two approaches, see this paper.

Workstation 6.5 does not use VT-d.

[scord]

Thanks for the post.

My Processor is an Intel XEON Quad Core W3540. the HOST OS is Windows XP SP3 - 32-bit. My Guest OS is Windows Server 2003 R2, SP2, 32-bit.

I am asking this question because of slow response on both my HOST and GUEST. when the slow periods hits which is all of the time, I have no control on either the HOST or GUEST systems. I also notice the HD lights on the PC are showing allot of activity. Then, after several minutes, the activity stops and I have control again.

I am attaching a Word file which has all of my specifications for the PC and also for all of the settings out of VMware Workstation.

[azn2kew]

With Quad cores 2.9GHz + 4GB and 1TB of SATA drives can run pretty decent VMs for the lab, I'm not sure what's happening on your hosted OS, but you can try using Performance Monitor built in tools and see what's happening and use Sysinternal tools Process Explorer to see anything weird at all. Do you have any antivirus scans or anything to might generate high CPU load? I would check out spywares as well. If not needed x64 bit guest, don't need to enable VT but I always enable them so its supported other goodies.

Have you update latest MS patches? How much memory you're allocated to your virtual guests and how many of them are running at the same time. 4GB is okay but if you can have 8GB that would speed up the performance too.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[wila]

4GB is okay but if you can have 8GB that would speed up the performance too.

True, but a small correction as nothing over 4GB will be seen unless you change your host OS from Windows XP 32 bits into a 64 bits alternative.

There's 32 bits Windows OS's where you can use PAE to use more memory, but that is only available on a select number of Windows Server OS's and it does come with a small performance penalty.

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[scord]

thanks for the post...would you mind reviewing the attached word file which will tell you more information about our envirnement.

With regards to the MS patches, all patches have been applied on both the HOST and GUEST OS. I just received this computer this week using Dell's defualt load of XP and installed Win2003 Srvr R2 SP2 myself as the GUEST. Applied all MS updates to both.

We are running Syamantec AV (enterprise) on both HOST and GUEST. But normally, these are not very intrusive with past history here.

If you dont mind, could you review the attachement and let me know any more thoughts that you may have....Thanks for your time

[K-MaC]

Also as per the parents latest post he has a 768mb video card installed on the host and his guest is assigned 2gb of memory. Perhaps the host system is running low on memory because of this.

I would try changing the guests memory allocation to 1.5gb and see if that helps you out.

Cheers

Kevin