Reply to: It's happening again

[d000hg]

Windows is usable just not as the basis of virtual machines. I don't know why that is the case and couldn't be arsed to find out so adopted the contractor approach of spending money to solve the issue.

Lots of people use Windows-based VM systems without problems.

[vetran]

The main problem seems to be that browsers & other client tools respond badly to being run in the dev VM, to some extent that's because they are competing for CPU time with the server side stuff. This can be got around by running the browsers at least on the host machine.

Run the browsers & tools on a separate machine altogether? That has been my experience with sql server / sharepoint, let the server do its thing and optimise itself. If you use the host you will get contention. The tools will be expecting to run on cheaper machine and will be optimised (hopefully) for network operation.

[doodab]

Anyway, I think an hour or so spent tuning the config on my dev server will work wonders.

[Sysman]

640k is enough for anyone

He got "RAM" mixed up with "personal fortune".

[doodab]

And now I have used the phrase "to be fair" in two posts in a row, which means I am a ******.

[doodab]

A slow machine to an hourly paid contractor is like slow setting concrete to a jobbing builder.

Relax, enjoy, invoice.

I need the dev machine to be as fast as possible because I don't know what I am doing (to be fair not many people do and I have a much better chance of figuring it out than most, which is why they gave me the job) and with every page taking 10-60s to load the odds of me figuring it out before someone gets upset are a bit too low for my liking. Given the contract value spending £2k on hardware that will make a difference is justifiable. £700 has gone on the basic machine, so I'm thinking £300 on another SSD and £300 to up the RAM to 32GB. I'm starting to think I should have gone for the 6 core CPU to start with

[doodab]

Two VMS with 6 cores? Each? Even if not, it's only a quad core processor (yes, I know it's hyperthreaded.)

My machine is a MUCH older spec than that, but I have no problems running a couple of decent VMs; this is a Windows 7 host, and 2 Linux VMs.

What are the host stats telling you? Where is it choking? Disk, memory paging, cpu..? If the host OS thinks it's fine and dandy, then what are the tools in the hosted OSs telling you?

You need to grab some data.

I have one with 4 cores & 8GB for a development server, and another with 2 cores and 4GB hosting just browsers & client tools that are connected to client co via a VPN. I could reduce the RAM allocated to this one to 2GB without causing too many problems.

Host memory usage is fairly steady around 14.5GB, I have vmware configured to fit VMs into host RAM so paging isn't an issue.

The main problem seems to be that browsers & other client tools respond badly to being run in the dev VM, to some extent that's because they are competing for CPU time with the server side stuff. This can be got around by running the browsers at least on the host machine. The second main problem is that the underlying software is actually very demanding on hardware, ideally the 8GB 4 core VM would be 3 separate machines with 2-4 cores and 4-8GB each and fast storage.

To be fair it performs more or less on a par with client co's actual deployment on much beefier hardware, it's just that the lag in response times is bloody annoying and it seems to get worse with each new version they release.

[DimPrawn]

A slow machine to an hourly paid contractor is like slow setting concrete to a jobbing builder.

Relax, enjoy, invoice.

[eek]

Sad to see such OS-religious zealotry. You're stunningly ignorant if you don't think W7/2008 is at least "vaguely usable". Mac/Win/Linux are all decent options.

Windows is usable just not as the basis of virtual machines. I don't know why that is the case and couldn't be arsed to find out so adopted the contractor approach of spending money to solve the issue.

[doodab]

Don't use Windows as the base operating system. You don't have such issues with a MacBook due to the base operating system being vaguely usable.

It really has little to do with the host OS being "inefficient". The software in question would usually be deployed on serious hardware (even a "small" deployment to a few hundred users is a job for 3 servers) and it tends to run like a bit of a dog whether hosted natively on unix, linux or windows, or as a VM in ESX. Partly this it to do with the out of the box config requiring some optimisation and but in terms of memory footprint it really starts around 6GB + the database for a pared down system and it's also fairly IO intensive, which is why I have that particular VM hosted on an SSD.

It might be that I need to throw money at it, but I really don't think spending ~ £3k on a macbook with a slower CPU and a single disk is going to make it magically go faster I'm afraid. Something like this is more likely to help:

LSI WarpDrive SLP-300 - PCIe Solid State Storage - LSI00263 - Scan.co.uk

or perhaps a dual-xeon box or another machine similar in spec to the one I have that can either host the larger VM or host the software natively.

[Sysman]

What are the host stats telling you? Where is it choking? Disk, memory paging, cpu..? If the host OS thinks it's fine and dandy, then what are the tools in the hosted OSs telling you?

You need to grab some data.

Agreed.

When I was running VMware, Windows Resource Manager showed me that VMware was choking on the pagefiles it creates on behalf of VMs, even when there was plenty of free physcial RAM available.

[d000hg]

Don't use Windows as the base operating system. You don't have such issues with a MacBook due to the base operating system being vaguely usable.

Sad to see such OS-religious zealotry. You're stunningly ignorant if you don't think W7/2008 is at least "vaguely usable". Mac/Win/Linux are all decent options.

[nomadd]

I'm working on my recently acquired desktop, an i7-2600k with 16GB RAM, Intel 160GB SSD and 3 x 1TB mechanical drives and I'm thinking "I need more". OK, so I do have 2 VMs running with 6 cores and 12GB allocated between them but that' hardly overprovisioning run riot so why, aside from the fact that the stuff I'm running in the VMs is bloatware, is it so damn slow? So it looks like I might have to move one of the VMs onto the 8GB quad core box in the corner, unfortunately I don't think it has enough disk space. Cock.

Time for another SSD.

At least it all goes through the company.

Two VMS with 6 cores? Each? Even if not, it's only a quad core processor (yes, I know it's hyperthreaded.)

My machine is a MUCH older spec than that, but I have no problems running a couple of decent VMs; this is a Windows 7 host, and 2 Linux VMs.

What are the host stats telling you? Where is it choking? Disk, memory paging, cpu..? If the host OS thinks it's fine and dandy, then what are the tools in the hosted OSs telling you?

You need to grab some data.

[Sysman]

Don't use Windows as the base operating system. You don't have such issues with a MacBook due to the base operating system being vaguely usable.

3 Linux and 1 FreeBSD server instances running here under VirtualBox on a much lesser piece of kit than the OP. No sweat at all.

[Scrag Meister]

Ink is not a cheap commodity. I need to get some too.

I have 2 striped 120Gb SSDs for my system drive and that is rapido, boot in about 40 secs.

I make an effort to minimise all the bloaty crap that can be installed, and no one else uses it except me and the wife.