Operations Best practices

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OperationsBest practices

• Disable VM time synchronizationwhen VMs are in a
  domain
• Does not use time zones !
• When copying VMs
• Run Sysprep, or Newsid (sysinternals.com)
• Do not include save state (.vsv) file
• Stop VS when shutting down host computer
• Use script for UPS

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Performance Optimizations

• Virtual Server is usually faster than Virtual PC
• Except for video (screen) handling
• Disk
• Three possible disk drivers in guest (in order of
  speed)
• 3. Windows SCSI driver (slowest)
• 2. IDE driver (only option for Virtual PC)
• 1. VM Additions SCSI driver (fastest)

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Move disk from VPC to VSFrom IDE to SCSI

• Issue How to boot IDE vhd as SCSI vhd
• Steps
• 1. In VS console
• Add SCSI Adapter (ID 7) to VM
• Leave boot disk as IDE disk
• 2. Startup VM
• Found new hardware Adaptec AIC-7870 PCI SCSI
  Adapter
• Needs Win2003 CD for aic78xx.sys (56 KB)
• Now you can boot as SCSI,but this is a slow SCSI
  driver.

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Move disk from VPC to VSFrom IDE to SCSI

• 3. In running VM
• Open Device Manager
• Right-click Adaptec / Update Driver
• Install from a specific location / Have Disk
• Browse to C\Program Files\Virtual Machine
  Additions
• Installs SCSI driver Microsoft Virtual Machine
  PCI SCSI
• Now the fast SCSI driver is loaded
• 4. In VS console
• Swith boot disk from IDE to SCSI adapter
• Virtual PC can still boot from disk as IDE

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PerformanceMost important tips

• ? Install VM Additions in all VMs
• Consider latest VM Additions
• ? Use enough memory per VM
• To avoid paging inside VM
• ? Plan capacity of running VMs
• Total disk usage
• Total CPU usage
• Total network bandwidth needed

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PerformanceOn host

• On host, for disks
• Use multiple physical disks
• Use SCSI host disks
• Defragment host disk
• Use NTFS
• Use NTFS compression - maybe
• On host, use multiple network adapters
• Unbind Virtual Machine Network Servicefrom
  dedicated host adapter
• On host, exclude .vhd from virus-scanning
• On host, do not use /3GB in boot.ini
• VMs use non-paged kernel memory

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PerformanceIn guest

• VM configuration
• Use SCSI disk for vhd-file
• Ensure VM Additions SCSI driver is used
• Use fixed disk instead of dynamic disks
• Guest configuration
• Disable unnecessary services
• Indexing, tracing, auto-search for network
  resources, etc
• Defragment guest disk
• Not when using differencing disk

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Summary/Call to Action