Servers and things

Hans Manhave · December 02, 2010, 12:31:55 PM

An optimized Server 2008 r2 settings white paper maybe? ESXi may not be to blame at all. I have to see when we can set the VM settings to 1 processor. There is definitely a kink in the cable somewhere. May have to be researched during the weekend.

Jeff Zylstra · December 02, 2010, 01:21:06 PM

I agree that the file access response time seems to have a slight delay in it with Server 08. It seems like my 7 year old Server 2000 box gave faster response on most file requests. There just seems to be a slight delay before any request is processed, whether it is file requests from a workstation, or when you screen displays when you are at the console. Maybe the new firewall or other enhanced security and/or logging is slowing things down. No tangible proof, other than the "seat of my pants" says so.

Hans Manhave · December 02, 2010, 01:44:57 PM

Any thoughts one what this article says?

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006619

Above reference from: http://www.barkingseal.com/2010/07/slow-network-performance-for-windows-2008-on-vmware-esxi/

Currently experiencing a bit of intermittent slowness. Sometimes it flies, sometimes I am waiting for take-off. A bit odd behavior. Could be the switch, I'm thinking. It has not been replaced yet.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 02, 2010, 02:07:04 PM

we disable TOE on all our Dells with Broadcoms - seems to be a source of many headaches. Kind of stupid since the purpose of TOE is performance enhancement.

Networking / switching is very important in vmware environments... if you have end-2-end GigE and switches that support it - you will also want to research enabling Jumbo Frames.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 02, 2010, 02:08:26 PM

looks like that link is talking about disabling it for the vNIC in the OS - so that's also worth doing.

Hans Manhave · December 02, 2010, 11:42:36 PM

What do people use for backup device? I have an internal Dell RD1000 (SATA).

I don't believe I can use that as the SATA cannot pass through nicely because it is on the Dell Perc H700 controller which also does a RAID.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 03, 2010, 08:15:52 AM

depends on how you feel about risk...

you have lots of options - snapshots, cloning, backing up entire vmdk, backing up from within the vm... there are lots of 3rd party utils for doing backups. Vmware has http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/consolidated_backup.html

Hans Manhave · December 03, 2010, 09:31:58 AM

I want to avoid risk. I'm a big boy and I have a big gun and know how to use it, but I'd rather live in peace and tranquility with my family around me. I have had my scares of wondering how to recover a lost file and even the main server drive. Had a lightning event around 1991 or 92 and was short about a week of backups. Not good. Didn't lose a smidgen of data in the October event, even though we were backed up on LTO tapes and I was ignorant of the fact that one has to treat a hosted database different than a TAM DBF or other database.

I have to be able to recover yesterday's individual file (spreadsheet, word doc, etc) as needed. Not necessarily the whole VM instance (am keeping a backup of those too at some yet-to-be-determined interval).

At this moment, I just want a daily backup that I can take off site.

It appeared to us (son and I) that I could take that RD1000 off the current controller, insert a server class SATA controller card and all will be well. It could work now also, but it would require a daily initialization of the backup cartridge which is more complex than backup activity should be.

Will study the material at the link you provided.

Jeff Zylstra · December 03, 2010, 03:02:57 PM

I use Acronis which does support VMs (although I don't have a VM), and I use removable USB hard drives which I take off site. Again, I have no idea how it works with VMs, but I've had good luck with it after I fixed a bad upgrade.

What I've found with backups is that if you don't do a test restore once in a while, nothing much else matters because tapes and drives can fail, upgrades and changes are made and the backup that was made will not always restore properly. Especially if you are relying on incremental or partial backups stitched together to make a complete backup. I always do a FULL backup and avoid partials of any kind. I'm just not smart enough to make them work reliably. Or maybe I'm paranoid enough not to trust them.

Hans Manhave · December 03, 2010, 03:10:42 PM

I have a few eSATA 6Gbps cards ordered to re-route the data cable for this backup unit away from the RAID controller. Then all should be well.

From that link, I can tell that backup is being thought about, but I cannot tell what the solution is.
Does ESXi claim that a backup solution is included or that it can be downloaded or can be bought?

Hans Manhave · December 03, 2010, 10:16:49 PM

This made life a lot better today. I'm thinking I have reached max speed in a networked TAM environment, about the same as on the previous Dell PE2600. I guess once you have 1Gb networking and 15K rpm SCSI/SATA and don't have hundreds of users there are no bottlenecks that an enduser can improve on.

Quote from: HMan on December 02, 2010, 01:44:57 PM
Any thoughts one what this article says?

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006619

Above reference from: http://www.barkingseal.com/2010/07/slow-network-performance-for-windows-2008-on-vmware-esxi/

Currently experiencing a bit of intermittent slowness. Sometimes it flies, sometimes I am waiting for take-off. A bit odd behavior. Could be the switch, I'm thinking. It has not been replaced yet.

Bloody Jack Kidd · December 04, 2010, 08:15:47 AM

I've seen many of time how, given the same hardware, one application can do something faster than another - so you may be at a point where the application is your bottleneck.

Be that as it may - new "tunables" will be revealed as time goes on and tweaking your VM host and guests will always benefit in some way. Just try not to tinker so much you break it - I've done that many times.

Hans Manhave · December 05, 2010, 06:23:18 PM

I am wondering, is it fine to install TAM in the remote desktop application? Then I could run certain things from there (i.e. Night Utils) and that should run at top speed. Does one the install a separate remote host, even if there is no off site? Maybe install some other programs on the host so they can be run through RDP? I think it is running pretty nicely now, but I have so many data requests at certain periods that I would like to free up some time so I can program (read: automate) a lot of these tasks and put them on other people's desktop to execute. My earlier mention elsewhere about Tableau would be one example. Extract TAM stuff and stick it into something that could use more advanced tools.

One thing I am looking forward to is duplicating the VM and testing the next TAM software on. For as little actual documentation one receives with that, it would need several days of deep testing to see what moved to where etc.