Question

Networking issues using VMWare Server

Asked by: jl542uop

I have a head-scratcher of an issue here I hope someone can help with.


We have a bunch of .NET websites hosted on VMWare Server guest systems using VMWare 1.0.8 and VMWare 2.0.1.  The back-end of these website are three Microsoft SQL (2000 and 2008) servers also running in Virtual Machines.

My hosts are all Windows Server 2003.  The Guests are mostly Windows Server 2003, but I have a few Windows 2008 VM's and a handful of CentOS linux VM's as well.  The hosts are all Dell servers running dual-Quad core procs and 8GB of RAM each.  I have 10 hosts and around 30 VM's running on those hosts.

For a while now we've been having some performance issues with our sites.  The sites have been losing sessions, temporarily losing access to the SQL server and website performance has intermittently been terrible.  I have monitored the VM and the host using Task Manager during the times when performance is bad and the CPU is usually consistently around 25% or so and the memory usage is normal and the networking usage is usually under .2%.

To make matters worse, the results have not been constant.  I can have one session that runs so slow it's almost unusable, but open another session from a different workstation or browser and have the site perform fine from there.  

We have recently installed IPSwitch WhatsUp Gold to monitor the systems inside the network.  It is currently only running a simple PING test and it is returning some interesting results.

I can now see that I get alerts saying that my VM's are frequently down.  They are often not down for very long, but the flow of alerts is constant.  Furthermore, it is only the VM's that are throwing the alerts.  The hosts seem to have no problems.

Does anyone know if the VMWare Server products utilize a "Virtual Switch" like the ESX version do?

If I communicate between VM's on the same server, does that traffic hit the physical network, or is it just handled within the VMWare networking components?

Most importantly, I need to know how to optimize my VMWare networked environment and need to stabilize my site.  

Also, has anyone had experience upgrading from VMWare Server to ESX?  How much of a performance improvement did you pick up?

Thanks!

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Asked On
2009-11-02 at 14:51:25ID24865590
Tags

virtual network

,

vmware server

,

network performance

,

network troubleshooting

,

whatsupgold

Topics

VMware

,

Miscellaneous Networking

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: za_mkhPosted on 2009-11-02 at 15:10:40ID: 25724754

If two guests running on the same ESX/ESXi/VMServer host communicate via the network, the traffic does not reach the physical network it is contained within the vSwitch. In VMWare Server Terms, it is called the vmnet.

You definitely need to switch to ESXi or a paid ESX solution for the amount of hosts/guests you are running. You are guaranteed to squeeze much more out of all hardware components with ESX/i.

You don't really upgrade from VMWare Server to ESX. You need to install ESX on the host (make sure it is on the VMWare HCL). This then becomes the 'OS' if you like. You then load your VM's on it. You can then use VMWare Converter to convert your VMWare Server VMs to ESX Server Format VMs.

Performance improvment gained is dependent on hardware that you run ESX/i on. But it will be faster than VMWare Server - guaranteed!

We started with VMWare Server 4-5 years ago (was called GSX then) ... now everything runs of ESX/i. BTW, we can comfortably run 50 VMs (mix of SQL/Oracle and other light I/O vms) on 3 Dual Quad Core Servers (1.86Ghz processors) with 32GB of RAM each But we have a super duper FC SAN ... which makes a difference too..

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-11-02 at 20:32:35ID: 25726066

Since you are running vm server, i suggest to install the latest NIC driver & upgrade NIC firmware if possible becoz vm server depends a lot on host OS, take note that vm server does not talk to the NIC directly, it will send/accept to/from the host OS for inbound/outbound networking request

The reason esx/esxi is better than vm server is becoz they are the OS who will talk to all the physical hardware directly
Ofcoz you will see better performance if ugprade to esx/esxi especially in vsphere we have the vmxnet3 nic adapter which gives better througput for optimal networking performance, but VM performance is not only rely on networking but also other resources such as cpu, ram, storage, etc.

I understand that you have about 30 VMs in your VI, i think its time to migrate to vSphere
Depending on the specs of your server hardware, perhaps you should slowly upgrade to esxi and monitor the performance

Cheers!

 

by: WraithbonePosted on 2009-11-03 at 01:18:25ID: 25727179

there are great performance gains, and after migrating you will find you will have next to no problems with strange things happening.

vmware converter is great for moving your files to the new host. its a free download from the download section of vmware's site. I just moved 46 machines from vmware server 1.06, 2 months ago. I can recommend the change! :)

remember esxi 4.0 is free!! believe me its the way to go!

 

by: jl542uopPosted on 2009-11-03 at 23:45:15ID: 31649146

OK, I'm seeing a trend...  All three responses I received said to try ESXi.  
VMWare support said to move to ESXi.  (big surprise there).

We are installing ESXi on a test system tomorrow.  

Thanks guys for your input!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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