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configuration is

  • ubuntu 2.6.31-21 64 bit
  • vmware 2.0.2 64 bit last release
  • hardware is core2 quad with 8GB ram and just 1 sata drive 500Gb intel chipset with VT
  • guest is win 2003 server SBS 32 bit

Dear friends, we have a converted physical to virtual windows sbs 2003, converted with last converter available nowadays http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/ vCenter converter.

Running the P2V 2K3 SBS on vmware server, it does boot fine, but we do note an abnormal CPU activity and a poor lan speed.

As attempts we did what follow.

We removed all unneeded peripherals, we removed one NIC (physical server was 2 nics), we changed the vmx to get the nic recognized as intel instead than amd, we removed 1 cpu (physical was 2 cpu), we removed anything was reported as failed driver from system events monitor.

Nothing to do, no way and funny results.

Let's read some tests results. All are made with the same file copied in different source folders. Please note that because of lan speed, expected result is 5 seconds.

Copying from client side (both directions copy, to/from server) results are i.e. 10 seconds, copying the same files from server side (again from and to server) results are different... from client to server, speed is round about (bit more) 10 seconds, but from server to client direction is slower: double the time. Beeing very fast and launching a simultaneous copy "from server to client"+"from client to server", this made from the server side, results in a stuck traffic... 45 seconds to do the copy.

vmware tools are installed and e1000 driver has been updated. With one processor CPU activity is still going up and down but much less than with two.

Because of test, we installed directly on vmware a win 2k8 STD 64 bit guest. We repeated all the above tests with exactly the same file and result is just one: always 5 seconds (the expected time amount that matches the lan speed)

Any idea about this issue is welcome and thank you if any.

Please, do not suggest to use ESXi unless you kindly provide some documentation on how to use ESXi with DRBD and heartbeat :-))) cheers.

Kind regards

R.

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Your test of a Windows 2008 VM's file server performance is not going to give you a proper comparison with the performance you can expect from the W2K3 SBS box - it's a very different beast, you really should test with a clean install of W2K3 SBS. The direction that you are having issues is very weird - I'd expect problems caused by a P2V to be in the other direction (Client to Server). Can you just confirm that there was no problem with the physical box carrying out this test? – Helvick Jun 1 '10 at 21:18
Dear Helvick, thank u 4 ur answer. The physical box was running fine. Its hardware is simply too old and in the next weeks it will be migrated to 2008 SBS Premium. We noticed the first differences when attempt to connect with the domain clients. Next we started comparison tests. Really strange. As a matter of facts the right question may be: which may be the main differences between a clean install against a P2V conversion? Why some blogs posts tells about the same P2V that the main fix was the e1000 driver? May it be that issue is caused by a 32 bits P2V against a whole 64 bits system? R. – RobertHC Jun 2 '10 at 14:22
P.S. we go to virtual to take advantage of HA features. In this case, win 2008 SBS will be clean installed as VM. At this time it is a question of knowledge and curiosity to try to fix this P2V conversion. Thank you again for ur replies. – RobertHC Jun 2 '10 at 14:30
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