Windows 7 and workstation 6.5.x

[GDeanBlakely]

I read around and looked at faqs but....

Will my workstation 6.5.2 build 156735 (which runs fine on vista) run on windows 7 x64 utlimate? I see some posts that talk around networking problems but most of those posts have zero answers. Windows 7 is going to be a pretty popular platform and it would be nice if something could be posted here about compatibility.

thanks,

Gary

[mdford]

It depends on your definition of "running fine". I've been running 6.5.3-185404 on Windows 7 x64 since the RC (now on RTM) and everything seems to work fine with a few exceptions:

1) Networking performance is terrible. VMs get about 100Mb performance on a 1Gb network. Disabling jumbo frames, offloading features, etc., did nothing for me.

2) Some applications do not respond well. I have a SQL Server installation on a Windows Server 2003 x64 VM that takes 30 seconds on a client VM to bring up the property pages for a database, it takes < 1s on the server VM.

Good luck!

Michael

[GDeanBlakely]

I now realize that I may not have made myself clear. My VMWare image is, and always will be, a Server 2003 image. I'm now hosting that image on Vista 64 Ultimate and am wondering if Windows 7 will also host it well. I'm not trying to run a Windows 7 Image. Is that how you understood me?

I use a lot of SQL server on my image so if that is 30x slower I guess I won't be able to migrate to Windows 7 until VMware fixes the problem.

thanks,

Gary

[mdford]

Yes, that's how I understood you. My host is Windows 7 x64, and I have a Server 2003 image (among others) running SQL Server.

I should point out that it isn't 30x slower in all operations, just when trying to bring up the property pages for a database. It isn't that the entire server runs that slowly, just that one particular function. That just shows there's something not quite right, but it is still quite functional as a database VM.

Michael

[Scissor]

1) Networking performance is terrible. VMs get about 100Mb performance on a 1Gb network. Disabling jumbo frames, offloading features, etc., did nothing for me.

Verify that you are running the latest NIC driver in your Host. Then try (temporarily) disabling any "task offload" or other "offload" settings under the Advanced settings tab of your network adapter. This has solved several networking issues due to buggy NIC drivers for me in the past.

2) Some applications do not respond well. I have a SQL Server installation on a Windows Server 2003 x64 VM that takes 30 seconds on a client VM to bring up the property pages for a database, it takes < 1s on the server VM.

What's the difference between your "client VM" and your "server VM"? Is one running on VMware Workstation and the other on VMware ESX?

Does your Guest have more than one vCPU allocated to it?

[mdford]

I've tried disabling all of the offload features one at a time and nothing helped. I have the latest driver installed.

My "client" VM is a VM containing Windows XP. My "server" VM is the Server 2003 with SQL Server installed. I have a quad core CPU on the host with 2 vCPUs allocated to a client and 1 vCPU allocated to the server.

Michael

[mdford]

Sorry to hijack the thread, I didn't intend to. But...

I tried disabling the offloading features again just now, and it seems to have made a difference (mostly).

From Win 7 Host -> Server 2003 Guest, it runs at full speed, ~800-900Mbps.

From Win 7 Host -> XP guest, it runs at ~500-700Mbps, but that's way better than before.

Going the other way, however, I'm not so lucky. From the XP Guest -> Win 7 host I get 200-300Mbps (not too bad), but from Server 2003 Guest -> Win 7 Host I get ~35Mbps (terrible). The latest vmware tools are installed on all of my guests.

Guest to guest is a mixed bag:

Win XP Guest -> Server 2003 Guest = 300-450Mbps

Server 2003 Guest -> Win XP Guest = 600-700Mbps.

Guest to another machine on my network is about the same:

XP Guest -> real server = 250-300 Mbps

Server 2003 Guest -> real server = 500-600 Mbps

Strange results.

[Scissor]

I read around and looked at faqs but....

Will my workstation 6.5.2 build 156735 (which runs fine on vista) run on windows 7 x64 utlimate?

VMware Workstation 7, which will have official support for Windows7 as both a Host and a Guest will be released "soon".

On an aside, VMware Workstation 6.5.3 is the latest version and is a free upgrade for you. I have been running VMware Workstation 6.5.3 on my Win7 x64 ultimate system without any problems.

I see some posts that talk around networking problems but most of those posts have zero answers. Windows 7 is going to be a pretty popular platform and it would be nice if something could be posted here about compatibility.

The only networking problem that I can recall offhand is that Guest NAT networking may be broken when running Workstation 6.5.x on Windows 7. That doesn't bother me because I alway used "bridged" networking for my Guests.

VMware Workstation 7 will fully support Windows 7.

[mdford]

I forgot to mention, all of my results are using bridged networking in the guests.

[Scissor]

Sorry to hijack the thread, I didn't intend to. But...

I tried disabling the offloading features again just now, and it seems to have made a difference (mostly).

From Win 7 Host -> Server 2003 Guest, it runs at full speed, ~800-900Mbps.

From Win 7 Host -> XP guest, it runs at ~500-700Mbps, but that's way better than before.

Going the other way, however, I'm not so lucky. From the XP Guest -> Win 7 host I get 200-300Mbps (not too bad), but from Server 2003 Guest -> Win 7 Host I get ~35Mbps (terrible). The latest vmware tools are installed on all of my guests.

Guest to guest is a mixed bag:

Win XP Guest -> Server 2003 Guest = 300-450Mbps

Server 2003 Guest -> Win XP Guest = 600-700Mbps.

Guest to another machine on my network is about the same:

XP Guest -> real server = 250-300 Mbps

Server 2003 Guest -> real server = 500-600 Mbps

Strange results.

Curious how you are measuring these network speeds? Are you using IPerf or something similar to isolate your testing to just the network stack?

[mdford]

I'm using Ixia QCheck for the network tests.

[Scissor]

I've tried disabling all of the offload features one at a time and nothing helped. I have the latest driver installed.

Just double-checking that you checked for the latest driver from the NIC manufacturer's web site (Broadcomm, Intel, Realtek, etc), not just from the system builder's web site (Dell, HP, etc). Often the NIC manufacturer's web site will release updated drivers long before they show up on the system builder's web site.

Which antivirus do you have installed on your Host? Any 3rd party firewalls or other "security" software installed on your Host?

I have a SQL Server installation on a Windows Server 2003 x64 VM that takes 30 seconds on a client VM to bring up the property pages for a database, it takes < 1s on the server VM

My "client" VM is a VM containing Windows XP. My "server" VM is the Server 2003 with SQL Server installed. I have a quad core CPU on the host with 2 vCPUs allocated to a client and 1 vCPU allocated to the server.

- - I see you have a 2 vCPU "client". Are you running any CPU-intensive tasks on your Host (SETI@Home, etc) that might be causing CPU contention?

- - The "client" probably needs to make a network connection the "server" VM in order to bring up the property pages for a database. If the network stack has problems (dropped packets, etc), that might account for the 30 second delay you are seeing. Or maybe there is a name resolution issue (DNS/WINS related).- - Are both of your VM's configured for Bridged networking? If you are using VMware's NAT networking under Win7 that might cause strange delays as well.

[mdford]

Yep, I downloaded and installed the latest driver from Realtek's website for my NIC, driver dated 8/20/2009.

I have no antivirus installed on any of the systems, host, guest, or otherwise. I also disabled the windows firewalls on all machines for the tests, and all testing was done after powering all of them up and waiting for a few minutes until the CPU usage went to 0. Everything is using bridged networking, not NAT.

[Scissor]

Going the other way, however, I'm not so lucky. From the XP Guest -&gt; Win 7 host I get 200-300Mbps (not too bad), but from Server 2003 Guest -&gt; Win 7 Host I get ~35Mbps (terrible). The latest vmware tools are installed on all of my guests.

On second thought, I'll bet once we fix the Server 2003 Guest network performance, your XP Guest database access performance will increase as well.

Can you attach the .vmx file and vmware.log from the directory containing your Server 2003 Guest?

[mdford]

Sure, here they are.

I played around with the network settings in the guest and disabled all of the offloading functions, it helped a great deal. I now get 300Mbps from guest to host, but that's still less than half (at 800Mbps) what I get going from host to guest.

XP Guest -&gt; Server 2003 Guest is the same at ~300Mbps, but Server 2003 Guest -&gt; XP dropped from ~600Mbps to 300-400 Mbps.

[Scissor]

I played around with the network settings in the guest and disabled all of the offloading functions, it helped a great deal. I now get 300Mbps from guest to host, but that's still less than half (at 800Mbps) what I get going from host to guest.

Hmm... I don't think you should need to change any of the default settings for the NICs in the Guest in order to get decent performance.

That's still great news! Your Host to Server Guest network performance is much better than before!

[Scissor]

VMware Workstation 7 will fully support Windows 7.

Looks like VMware Workstation 7 was released today: http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/new.html

[mdford]

Ok, I've upgraded to VMWks7 and did some testing. Although I found several other problems with Workstation 7, I think I've narrowed the network issues down to a few things:

1) The virtual NIC driver for Windows XP is just plain slow when communicating with the host or another guest. Slow as in ~250Mbps operation on a 1Gbps network.

2) Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 guests sees the full 1Gbps transfer rates going guest to guest, and somewhat less than that going from guest to host (_{450-600 Mbps) or host to guest (}700-900 Mbps)

3) The huge slowdown I was seeing before in some of my guests was attributed to the Cisco VPN installing its own driver (Deterministic Network Enhancer) in the network stack. I do not know if the same behavior occurs on a real machine with the VPN client installed. If not, I'd be curious to know if there is a workaround or a fix for this problem.

Michael