Anybody familiar with VMWare tuning?

[Bill McGonigle]

On Jan 22, 2008, at 13:29, Kristian Erik Hermansen wrote:

> * Do you have a CPU with virtualization extensions?

Yes, this is what I was going to ask as well.  Issue:

   cat /proc/cpuinfo

You'll want to find, e.g. 'vt' on Intel.

Also, you need to turn it on in the BIOS, even if you have it on the  
CPU, as it's usually defaulted to off.  And here's the real kicker -  
if you just save BIOS changes and reboot it won't take effect.  You  
have to pull power and cold-boot the machine for it to work.  DAMHINT!

I'm experiencing some cobwebs on this, but there was one CPU flag  
where some Intel processors would report, let's say it's 'vt', in  
cpuinfo, as a way of saying 'I have a CPU flag to tell you whether I  
have this feature or not, just ask me" but Linux just reports the  
presence of the flag, not the flag's value.  I'm not sure that it was  
vt , though - but your best bet is to look up the CPU's spec sheet to  
make sure.

AMD is less confusing, but I don't recall which CPU flag indicates  
hardware virtualization support.  GFGI.

Also, cache size is important when being split among CPU's (more is  
better!) and some of the older Intel multi-cores lacked the proper  
cache crossbar so you had to go out to main memory to share L2  
between processors.  I think the '06 crop of processors remedied  
this, as the '05's were rushed out to compete with AMD.   
Virtualization was sub-par on the first generation.  Also, be  
cognizant of CPU speed and bus speed and try to minimize wait  
states.  e.g. if you have a 1.33 GHz bus and a 2.8 GHz CPU you might  
get better performance slowing the CPU down to 2.66GHz for better  
wait-state handling.  Some BIOS's let you fiddle, some don't.

> * Are you running the latest VMware Server 1.x?  2.x sucks btw...

Oh, do tell - I haven't upgraded to 2 yet.

-Bill

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