Hi All, I was hoping to run a Windows 2003 server in production on Centos 5.2 however the performance isn't very good. The host is Centos 5.2 64 bit. I did some file transfers and I'm seeing about 12Mb/s on a Windows 2003 VM and about 8Mb/s on a Windows 2003 32 bit VM. Numbers are measured using the builtin Windows 2003 server networking monitor (Press Ctrl Alt Del in Windows and go to the Windows tab). The server is an IBM xServe about a year old and the VMs are running in LVM partitions. Switches are Cisco Gigabit. So the hardware for server performance and network performance are not a limiting factor - I understand that the results I'm seeing are typical without running paravirtualized drivers in Windows. Just wanted to ask what the options are to get things going faster. I believe the choices are:- - Pay the dollars for a RedHat subscription which includes paravitualized drives for Windows - Install the LGPL PV drivers (don't want to do this, these are production machines and even up to a few months ago I'm seeing reports of VM corruption in the list. It would appear that the LGPL PV drivers are not at production standard yet) - Pay for an alternative Xen distribution, such as Xen's commercial product. Can someone confirm, have I covered all the bases? Thanks Stephen
On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 3:33 PM, Stephen <sdw2@shineonline.co.nz> wrote: > Hi All, > > I was hoping to run a Windows 2003 server in production on Centos 5.2 > however the performance isn't very good. > > The host is Centos 5.2 64 bit. I did some file transfers and I'm seeing > about 12Mb/s on a Windows 2003 VM and about 8Mb/s on a Windows 2003 32 bit > VM. Numbers are measured using the builtin Windows 2003 server networking > monitor (Press Ctrl Alt Del in Windows and go to the Windows tab). > > The server is an IBM xServe about a year old and the VMs are running in LVM > partitions. Switches are Cisco Gigabit. So the hardware for server > performance and network performance are not a limiting factor - I understand > that the results I'm seeing are typical without running paravirtualized > drivers in Windows. > > Just wanted to ask what the options are to get things going faster. I > believe the choices are:- > - Pay the dollars for a RedHat subscription which includes paravitualized > drives for Windows > - Install the LGPL PV drivers (don't want to do this, these are production > machines and even up to a few months ago I'm seeing reports of VM corruption > in the list. It would appear that the LGPL PV drivers are not at production > standard yet) > - Pay for an alternative Xen distribution, such as Xen's commercial > product. > > Can someone confirm, have I covered all the bases? > I have heard of one other option: Halsign TurboGate Tools http://www.halsign.com/ I haven't tried them personally, but I have seen them announced on the Xen mailing lists. Todd -- Todd Deshane http://todddeshane.net check out our book: http://runningxen.com
> I have heard of one other option: > > Halsign TurboGate Tools > http://www.halsign.com/ > > I haven't tried them personally, but I have seen them announced on the > Xen mailing lists. > Thanks Todd, I did try loading the Halsign RPMs, but my mistake I forgot about the LGPL PV drivers I had loaded some time back and it crashed the test VM - it wouldn't start. In the end decided to play safe and just went with Windows on bare hardware (non virtualized) as this machine is mostly file serving and is remote. Have a number of Xen Linux on Linux systems which are very successful. Regards Stephen