Improving Virtual server performance

  • Article

More and more customers are consolidating their server by virtualization. Some customer may raise some performance issue regarding the virtual server. This article will cover following topics.

Improving virtual hard disk performance

You can improve throughput for virtual hard disks by using the following techniques:

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Use a hard disk solution that allows fast access, such as a SCSI hard disk, a redundant array of independent disks (RAID), or storage area network (SAN).

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Put each virtual hard disk on a dedicated volume, SCSI hard disk, RAID, or SAN. It is easiest to put virtual hard disks together with their associated virtual machine configuration files on a RAID or SAN because this keeps everything in one place.

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Put virtual hard disks on a different physical disk than the host operating system. In particular, you want to put virtual hard disks on a different physical disk than the host page file.

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Compact virtual hard disks to free more physical disk space.

For more information about improving virtual hard disk performance, see Optimizing virtual hard disks .

Improving network performance

You can improve network performance by using the following techniques:

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Distribute the networking load. If you are running multiple instances of Virtual Server, you can distribute the networking load between them in the same manner as you would with physical servers. To do this, run a mix of network-intensive and non-network-intensive applications on a single instance of Virtual Server.

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Add physical network adapters. For best performance, dedicate at least one physical network adapter to each virtual machine.

Improving processor performance

You can improve processor performance by using the following techniques:

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Adjust the CPU allocation for virtual machines according to their CPU requirements. You can use monitoring software, such as Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), to ascertain CPU utilization for each virtual machine. For more information about adjusting CPU allocation, see Configuring CPU resources for virtual machines .

Improving Virtual Server performance

You can improve the performance of Virtual Server by making the following configuration changes on the host operating system:

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Increase the acceleration of your graphics hardware to full, as follows. On the Display control panel, click the Settings tab, and then click Advanced. Click the Troubleshoot tab, and then move the Hardware acceleration slider to Full.

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Disable all unnecessary pointer options, such as pointer trails and shadow cursors, as follows. On the Mouse control panel, click the Pointer Options tab, and clear the check boxes of any options that you do not need.

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Optimize system settings for performance, as follows. On the System control panel, click the Advanced tab. Under Performance, click Settings, and then click Adjust for best performance. Click the Advanced tab, select Background services, and then click OK twice.

You can improve the speed with which the Administration Website Master Status page displays and refreshes by hiding the virtual machine thumbnails that appear under Remote View. You can do this by clearing the Remote View check box on the Administration Website Properties page.

For more information of virtual server operation guide ,please visit Virtual Server 2005 Technical Library