Servers and things

Hans Manhave · November 16, 2010, 05:06:05 PM

Yes, but they didn't take long. I don't think I left a lot on the table, but I'll never know. I had a target price, target specs and financing was already arranged. Satisfy all those items we have a deal. I only wish I could buy a car that way (an hour and a half of e-mailing back and forth) whenever it becomes time to buy a car again (after Obama), cannot trust him nor his agencies, but I'm getting off topic.

Quote from: Billy Welsh on November 16, 2010, 05:01:17 PM
Did the salesman have to "consult with the manager" about the discount?

Coral · November 17, 2010, 03:11:05 PM

You can buy a car that way. I've done it. I knew what I wanted and found it on line, made an offer, it was accepted and I picked up the new car the next day (and filled out the paperwork then)

Hans Manhave · December 01, 2010, 11:08:26 AM

T710 installed. Using VMWare ESXi. Copied virtual machine from temp server to T710. Took some time, but result was positive. I didn't have a recognized 1Gb nic for the temp server so it operated at 100Mb.

Dedicated 8Gb and 4 processors to the virtual MS Server 2008 r2 install. Is this about what others do?

I have 8 nic ports. Configured for 1Gb, but am only using 1 port. Is this where I can gain some more speed?

Converted a MS Virtual PC 2007 machine into a VMWare vmachine. Works fine also, and got it off my own desktop.

Anyone have any suggestions as to how to squeeze the most speed out of it? I have 64GB of RAM.

Jeff Golas · December 01, 2010, 11:27:17 AM

If you say you dedicated 8gb towards one VM, you may want to rethink that unless its a database server or something that needs that much memory. I think I have 8 gig total in my box and usually dedicated 2-4 gig per VM depending on need. There's nothing on it thats overall hefty so I run 5 vms. You can always monitor memory useage after a couple weeks and adjust as necessary. With 64 gigs of ram you have plenty to go around so it may not be that big of deal either.

As far as having 8 nics...the reason for that is it virtualizes your NIC...you can either choose to have a single or multiple VMs shared on one physical nic port, or you can assign one nic port per VM to have full gigabit bandwidth for up to 8 VMs. Relate each VM to a real-deal physical server and you can see how this plays out. You could team Nics to get more bandwidth, but honestly I doubt your using full gigabit to begin with, so it wouldn't produce any measureable gain.

Hans Manhave · December 01, 2010, 11:39:02 AM

It just seems that I should be able to squeeze still a bit more speed out of something.

Using ESXi, are virtual Win2008 servers slower, faster or same speed as if installed as actual machines?

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 01, 2010, 11:43:30 AM

ESXi is very good with both memory and cpu management - your 2008 instance can get by with significantly fewer resources leaving lots of room for other VMs. Up until ESX v.4 - the recommended config was only 1 vCPU per vm guest - since a single virtual CPU can draw it's resources from multiple physical CPUs.

Considering the size of your shop - I'd give it 1 vCPU and 2GB RAM to start and bump up the memory as required. I would also utilize your many NICs by creating a management NIC and a Virtual Machine NIC.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 01, 2010, 11:45:25 AM

In theoretical benchmarks, 2008 on real iron might have a performance edge, but the hypervisors are very good these days and in your environment you will not be able to tell the difference.

Jeff Golas · December 01, 2010, 12:10:39 PM

Quote from: Rick Chisholm on December 01, 2010, 11:45:25 AM
In theoretical benchmarks, 2008 on real iron might have a performance edge, but the hypervisors are very good these days and in your environment you will not be able to tell the difference.

What he said, but honestly as far as I've seen installing 2003 under ESXI, its blazingly fast. In fact I timed it once....Windows server 2003 install, Sp2, and all Windows Updates (using Comcast 16/2 connection) - 1.5 hours boot to running server.

Having 15k rpm sas drives helps a lot too :-) If you're using a SAN with iscsi you may be seeing a little lag.

Hans Manhave · December 01, 2010, 12:42:06 PM

4 - 300GB 15K RPM SA SCSI 6Gbps 3.5in Hotplug Hard Drives for the files.
2 - 146GB 15K RPM SA SCSI 3Gbps 3.5in hotplug for the ESXi and VM OS's.

It is not particularly slow, but I was expecting a greater, blindingly fast, file serving speed. Maybe reducing the resources would actually speed it up. Just wondering what the virtualization hit might be. I guess 2008 runs a bit slower than 2003 would have done on the same hardware.

Considering the time it took to set up initially on a temporary server, I am quite happy that it only took about 45 minutes (outside the vm stores moving) to setup the permanent server. No time spent on configuring the domain server etc. at all. Setup ESXi and copy the necessary vm's, adjust for hardware and ready.

I'm running a Windows 2K vm to run older scan routing software that won't work on XP or newer. This takes hardly any resources. And then the production Win Server 2008 r2 (64bit). Will have at least one more virtual machine. Probably Windows7Ultimate for some phone logging / routing software.

Jeff Golas · December 01, 2010, 12:45:38 PM

Its a nice setup, but in ESXi you have to make sure you have your storage containers set up for each seperate raid array, and when you create or import VMs you have to make sure the OSs to into one container and the files go into other containers. I run ESXI off of an SD card and use the drives for straight up Vms - os/data and all.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 01, 2010, 04:03:29 PM

What are you using as a benchmark for the "slowness" of 2008 - the performance of an app like TAM, the time it takes to copy a large file / bunch of small files etc.

One thing about virtualization that I feel requires a bit of tuning is file I/O - which is dependent on both your disk subsystem and your network config - so scrutinize those very closely.

Hans Manhave · December 01, 2010, 06:10:35 PM

My benchmark? A Gateway DX4200-09 with 4GB RAM, AMD Phenom 9150e Quad Core processor which I was using as my temporary server setup. It performed rather well, extremely well if I consider the purchase price and that it was the "toy" of one of my minor children. It has a single SATA drive, no RAID. www.woot.com rocks!

A server definitely would want to have dual power supplies, and dual everything, etc. but it performed rather well. Never ran the MS SQL 2005 on it or some other programs. It could be that it was a little pickup truck and I didn't even halfway load it. While the T710 is a Titan and is ready to carry several tons of coal.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 01, 2010, 07:06:53 PM

What did the Gateway do faster? Or are you just saying it seemed faster?

Hans Manhave · December 02, 2010, 09:02:35 AM

File access, which is what I use mostly. I have yet to replace the switches in the system. It is using a 1Gb connection now between the server and my machine while before it was a 100Mb because I didn't have any server class nic's to use. File transfer (copying) is definitely faster, but using TAM or working with large spreadsheets it doesn't appear to be, actually may be a tad slower.

Jeff Zylstra · December 02, 2010, 11:31:53 AM

I feel a blog article coming on. Maybe something on file I/O tuning for servers and workstations? Which settings & how to adjust them, how to measure performance and which tools to use, measuring traffic on the network, etc.... All good stuff. I know how to set the size my page file in windows and maybe know how to check frame size on NICs, but I don't know the relationship to file server and workstation settings, if any. Edumacate us, oh guru of the gigbit!