VMware Cloud Community
gsb005
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

Extremely Slow Install - ESXi 6.5 on VM Workstation 14 running on Windows 10 Professional

Hello guys,

I want to bring forth a problem that I have been trying to resolve now for a few weeks but have been unable to. Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

First of my hardware:

Dell Precision T5500 Workstation Xeon 8 Core 3.06Ghz-. 24GB DDR3 ECC RAM. 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.5" HDD 250GB SSD + WD Gold 4TB high-capacity datacenter harddrive - SATA - 7200rpm - 128 MB Buffer installed as a separate drive. Window's 10 Professional installed.

I am using VMware Player (have used VMWare workstation as well) install ESXi 6.5 to use in my home lab.The install process is excruciatingly slow.

I have given it 4 virtual processors to use and 16 gigs of ram. (On youtube, people have allocated fewer resources and their install flies by.

After 3 hours, here is the progress, as you can see from the screen below:

pastedImage_4.png

I have tried the to follow KB article to the best of my ability: VMware Knowledge Base but to no avail.

I absolutely refuse to believe that my hardware is not strong enough to run ESXi when I run Windows 2016 / Windows 2012 and other servers simutaneously, including my Linux distro's.

I have also tried booting with the noHeadless=true option without any luck and have also made:

vmci0.present = "FALSE"

to circumvent another error.

I have also tried different hardware types, for example using SCSI and SATA, IDE for my install. Nothing makes a difference.

Please let me know why the "install" of ESXi on such a beefy workstation is so slow.

1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
bluefirestorm
Champion
Champion
Jump to solution

Official link to VMware Workstation Player 12.5.8 download

https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/free#desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_workstation_player/12_0

I would not call Nehalem EP series bad; but rather outdated and lacking in features.

Apart from missing the VMX unrestricted guest feature (which is closest a VM can get to running bare metal on the CPU), CPUs before Westmere also don't have AES and carryless quad word multiply instructions which make encryption/decryption a lot faster. The GHz clock and core/thread count race is not the only game to look out for. Extended Page Table (EPT) is another CPU feature that makes memory intensive VMs run faster as there is no need for hypervisor software shadow paging. EPT is required by the VM unrestricted guest and EPT is required to run 64-bit nested VMs.

Note that not all CPUs after Westmere are guaranteed to have these features (example some of the Bay Trail Pentium N CPUs released in 2013/2014 don't have EPT and AES-NI at all).

View solution in original post

9 Replies
pwolf
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Your workstation may be beefy, but your processor is of quite old architecture (if it is still the original one) and that is not supported on ESXi 6.5. You may have better luck with ESXi 6.0.

Reply
0 Kudos
bluefirestorm
Champion
Champion
Jump to solution

From the search on the web, Precision T5500 workstations can come with either Nehalem EP or Westmere EP. There could be other CPU families.

https://ark.intel.com/products/codename/64237/Nehalem-EP

https://ark.intel.com/products/codename/63616/Westmere-EP#@Westmere-EP

I don't know whether the 3.06GHz you refer to is the base clock or turbo clock. What is the exact CPU model that you have? If you attach the vmware.log of the install process a lot of this mystery can be cleared up.

Nehalem EP is not a supported CPU for Workstation/Player 14.x as it does not have the VMX Unrestricted Guest feature. So if the CPU is a Nehalem EP, you should go back to using Workstation Pro/Player 12.5.x. (the last major release that supports CPUs without VMX Unrestricted Guest feature).

Reply
0 Kudos
gsb005
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

I am going to attach the logs here. Also here is my CPU info:

Intel Xeon X5570

Cores:

4

Threads:

4

Name:

Intel Xeon X5570

Code Name:

Gainestown

Package:

Socket 1366 LGA

Technology:

45nm

Specification:

Intel Xeon CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz

Family:

6

Extended Family:

6

Model:

A

Extended Model:

1A

Stepping:

5

Revision:

D0

Instructions:

MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, Intel 64, NX, VMX

Virtualization:

Supported, Enabled

Hyperthreading:

Supported, Disabled

Bus Speed:

132.5 MHz

Rated Bus Speed:

3180.4 MHz

Stock Core Speed:

2933 MHz

Stock Bus Speed:

133 MHz

Average Temperature:

48 °C

Caches

L1 Data Cache Size:

4 x 32 KBytes

L1 Instructions Cache Size:

4 x 32 KBytes

L2 Unified Cache Size:

4 x 256 KBytes

L3 Unified Cache Size:

8192 KBytes

Cores

Core 0

Core Speed:

3312.9 MHz

Multiplier:

x 25.0

Bus Speed:

132.5 MHz

Rated Bus Speed:

3180.4 MHz

Temperature:

50 °C

Threads:

APIC ID: 16

Core 1

Core Speed:

3312.9 MHz

Multiplier:

x 25.0

Bus Speed:

132.5 MHz

Rated Bus Speed:

3180.4 MHz

Temperature:

46 °C

Threads:

APIC ID: 18

Core 2

Core Speed:

3312.9 MHz

Multiplier:

x 25.0

Bus Speed:

132.5 MHz

Rated Bus Speed:

3180.4 MHz

Temperature:

49 °C

Threads:

APIC ID: 20

Core 3

Core Speed:

1590.2 MHz

Multiplier:

x 12.0

Bus Speed:

132.5 MHz

Rated Bus Speed:

3180.4 MHz

Temperature:

48 °C

Threads:

APIC ID: 22

Intel Xeon X5570

Cores:

4

Threads:

4

Name:

Intel Xeon X5570

Code Name:

Gainestown

Package:

Socket 1366 LGA

Technology:

45nm

Specification:

Intel Xeon CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz

Family:

6

Extended Family:

6

Model:

A

Extended Model:

1A

Stepping:

5

Revision:

D0

Instructions:

MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, Intel 64, NX, VMX

Virtualization:

Supported, Enabled

Hyperthreading:

Supported, Disabled

Bus Speed:

132.5 MHz

Rated Bus Speed:

3180.4 MHz

Stock Core Speed:

2933 MHz

Stock Bus Speed:

133 MHz

Average Temperature:

52 °C

Caches

L1 Data Cache Size:

4 x 32 KBytes

L1 Instructions Cache Size:

4 x 32 KBytes

L2 Unified Cache Size:

4 x 256 KBytes

L3 Unified Cache Size:

8192 KBytes

Cores

Core 0

Core Speed:

3312.9 MHz

Multiplier:

x 25.0

Bus Speed:

132.5 MHz

Rated Bus Speed:

3180.4 MHz

Temperature:

56 °C

Threads:

APIC ID: 0

Core 1

Core Speed:

1590.2 MHz

Multiplier:

x 12.0

Bus Speed:

132.5 MHz

Rated Bus Speed:

3180.4 MHz

Temperature:

48 °C

Threads:

APIC ID: 2

Core 2

Core Speed:

1590.2 MHz

Multiplier:

x 12.0

Bus Speed:

132.5 MHz

Rated Bus Speed:

3180.4 MHz

Temperature:

53 °C

Threads:

APIC ID: 4

Core 3

Core Speed:

1590.2 MHz

Multiplier:

x 12.0

Bus Speed:

132.5 MHz

Rated Bus Speed:

3180.4 MHz

Temperature:

50 °C

Threads:

APIC ID: 6

Please let me know what you think.

Reply
0 Kudos
bluefirestorm
Champion
Champion
Jump to solution

Your CPU is Xeon X5570 which belongs to the Nehalem EP family of CPUs; which does not have the VMX Unrestricted Guest feature. So you should try using VMware Workstation Player 12.5.8. Workstation Pro/Player 14.x will work only with Intel Westmere and later CPUs that has the unrestricted guest feature.

https://ark.intel.com/products/37111/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5570-8M-Cache-2_93-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI

2017-11-22T14:14:24.886-06:00| vmx| I125: hostCPUID codename: Nehalem (Core i7)

2017-11-22T14:14:24.886-06:00| vmx| I125: hostCPUID name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           X5570  @ 2.93GHz

2017-11-22T14:14:24.887-06:00| vmx| I125: Common: MSR      0x485 =            0x401c5

Reply
0 Kudos
gsb005
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

thank you so much blue firestorm. Let me know if you have an official link to that download.

also, I had thought this Xeon processor is really good, is it really that bad?

Reply
0 Kudos
bluefirestorm
Champion
Champion
Jump to solution

Official link to VMware Workstation Player 12.5.8 download

https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/free#desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_workstation_player/12_0

I would not call Nehalem EP series bad; but rather outdated and lacking in features.

Apart from missing the VMX unrestricted guest feature (which is closest a VM can get to running bare metal on the CPU), CPUs before Westmere also don't have AES and carryless quad word multiply instructions which make encryption/decryption a lot faster. The GHz clock and core/thread count race is not the only game to look out for. Extended Page Table (EPT) is another CPU feature that makes memory intensive VMs run faster as there is no need for hypervisor software shadow paging. EPT is required by the VM unrestricted guest and EPT is required to run 64-bit nested VMs.

Note that not all CPUs after Westmere are guaranteed to have these features (example some of the Bay Trail Pentium N CPUs released in 2013/2014 don't have EPT and AES-NI at all).

gsb005
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

Thank you Smiley Happy

Reply
0 Kudos
gsb005
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

Thank you I installed version 12 and my system has really been lightning fast as compared to what it was with version 14; the installation is complete and everything works well.

The only thing I want to do is add a separate data store; from a disk that is on the host computer? can that be done easily? should I open up a new thread. that's where all my new VM's will reside. thanks. - thanks bluestorm.

Reply
0 Kudos
bluefirestorm
Champion
Champion
Jump to solution

You just add another virtual disk to the ESXi 6.5 VM and that virtual disk can then be added as another datastore within the ESXi 6.5 VM.

It is best to have preallocate the virtual disks at the Workstation Player VM level especially as this is an ESXi VM. You wouldn't want two levels of disk allocation requests in the event you have a thin-provisioned VM running inside the ESXi 6.5 VM that needs additional disk space while the ESXi VM itself at the Workstation Player level is not preallocated.