Comments on: More VMware Server in Production http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/01/31/more-vmware-server-in-production/ Technical musings of an entrepreneur. Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:17:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Brian http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/01/31/more-vmware-server-in-production/#comment-301 Brian Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:22:43 +0000 http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/01/31/more-vmware-server-in-production/#comment-301 Ah, that's where I see the differences. We put our VM's on a dedicated SAN, with a 1GB cached controller behind an NFS cluster. Probably why were were seeing increased performance. There's a also a decent amount of NFS tweaking required to get it working smoothly. Once I had our network dialed-in, I was able to push 20Mb/s write in a VM, over NFS. Check out some of the older articles on the site regarding the setup. Ah, that’s where I see the differences. We put our VM’s on a dedicated SAN, with a 1GB cached controller behind an NFS cluster. Probably why were were seeing increased performance.

There’s a also a decent amount of NFS tweaking required to get it working smoothly. Once I had our network dialed-in, I was able to push 20Mb/s write in a VM, over NFS.

Check out some of the older articles on the site regarding the setup.

]]> By: Ben Ruset http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/01/31/more-vmware-server-in-production/#comment-300 Ben Ruset Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:28:52 +0000 http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/01/31/more-vmware-server-in-production/#comment-300 We had originally attempted to put our vmdk's on a PowerEdge 2900 with 8x500gb SATA drives and a PERC controller, shared out with NFS. We've been seeing speeds slower than software raid out of that PERC controller, which meant that once we had ~20 or so VM's sitting on NFS, the guest OS's would start seeing SCSI timeouts as the 2900 struggled to get I/O processed fast enough. So we're slapping 750gb drives in each server and going back to local disk, for now. We're also buying 10 more PE1950's, bringing us up to a 25 server VMWare Server farm. We had originally attempted to put our vmdk’s on a PowerEdge 2900 with 8×500gb SATA drives and a PERC controller, shared out with NFS. We’ve been seeing speeds slower than software raid out of that PERC controller, which meant that once we had ~20 or so VM’s sitting on NFS, the guest OS’s would start seeing SCSI timeouts as the 2900 struggled to get I/O processed fast enough.

So we’re slapping 750gb drives in each server and going back to local disk, for now. We’re also buying 10 more PE1950’s, bringing us up to a 25 server VMWare Server farm.

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