William Hindman
wdhindman at dejpolsystems.com
Sun Jun 28 05:28:02 CDT 2009
...I was damn near drooling by the time I got through jc's post :) William -------------------------------------------------- From: "Jim Lawrence" <accessd at shaw.ca> Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2009 2:09 AM To: "'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'" <accessd at databaseadvisors.com> Subject: Re: [AccessD] Running four VMs on Windows 2003 Server > Impressive John... all those nice new toys as well... I hope I do not > sound > too jealous. ;-) ...but there is many medium companies who do not have the > hardware you do. > > Jim > > -----Original Message----- > From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby > Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2009 8:10 PM > To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving > Subject: [AccessD] Running four VMs on Windows 2003 Server > > I finally got around to fixing the issue I was having running multiple VMs > on my Windows 2003 X64 > servers, now running 16 gigs of ram. The first problem I was having which > was a real b****to solve > was that the VMs simply would not connect to the network. It turns out > that > I had Hamachi installed > on the server. Apparently what happens is that hamachi installs a new NIC > and all that stuff and > now when the VMs fire up they grab the Hamachi NIC instead of the physical > NIC. As soon as I > uninstalled Hamachi that problem went away. BTW I have been googling this > problem for MONTHS and > finally found this tip as the very last post in one of the threads about > VMs > not connecting. > > So... I now have four VMs running, each VM with three gigs of ram. > > I run a specific software package which does address validation. A couple > of weeks ago I bought a > new Vertex Solid State Disk: > > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393 > > I create four partitions on that and then assign one of the partitions to > each virtual machine. I > then copy all of the database files that Accuzip uses for the address > processing. These files are > read-only BTW. > > I used to use an iRam (hardware) RAM disk with 4 gigs total, and do the > same > thing, partition it > into four 1 gb partitions and give each VM a partition. That worked for > one > VM but the performance > was awful for any more than that. The iRam has a total bandwidth of about > 125 gbytes / sec (it was > SATA I) and it just wasn't up to the job. > > Just as a benchmark, I was getting about 1 million records / hour running > on > a raid 6 disk array, so > even the iRam was a big improvement, at least for one instance. At any > rate, I would get about 2.5 > million records / hour processing in my one VM using the iRam. Using the > new SSD I get about 4.1 > million records per hour, and I am getting that in FOUR virtual machines > running simultaneously! > > I upgraded one of my servers to the new AMD Phenom II X4: > > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103471 > > And on that machine, running only one VM (and using that SSD) I achieved > about 6.4 million records / > hour. That processor is about 40% faster so it makes sense that I would > get > a much higher records / > hour. I am going to order a new processor for the server that I am > setting > up as my VM server and > see if I can jack the four VMS up to something close to that rate as well. > 'Twould be nice if that > happens! > > I originally had SQL Server running on this machine and had assigned 7 > gigs > to it. With four VMs > trying to use 3 gigs each, performance on the VMs slowed to worse than a > crawl. Once I remembered > that SQL Server was there, I stopped the service, stopped all of the VMs, > closed the VM host > software, reopened the host and reopened all of the VMS and the > performance > is stellar. > > The thing to understand is that I often have to validate tens of millions > of > records. My total > processing time for a two million record chunk was about 40 minutes on the > faster machine so to do > 50 million records (25 files) would take most of a 24 hour day. If I can > split those 25 files out > over four machines I will drop the total turnaround down to a more > reasonable 6 hours or so, > especially if I can get the faster processor going on the VM server. > > I will be a happy camper. > > -- > John W. Colby > www.ColbyConsulting.com > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com >