topic New DL380 G7 with ESXI 5 very slow performance in Operating System - VMware

New DL380 G7 with ESXI 5 very slow performance

meronj — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:41:09 GMT

Just installed a new DL380 G7 with ESXI 5 .

the server has 8 sas disks 300GB 10k each , 410i array controller , 64 GB of memory and an additional BroradCom 4XNIC PCI-e card.

the first two disks are raid 1 (mirror) for the esxi 5 system and the other 6 disks are riad 5 + 1 hot spare for the VM's (DATA).

as the new system is very slow on running only two VM's I wanted to know what are the best practices for the bios setup and the raid setup .

Re: New DL380 G7 with ESXI 5 very slow performance

Modris Bremze — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:37:56 GMT

If you are not booting from remote storage, there is not much you should set/enable in BIOS apart from Intel-VT/AMD-VT and GMT time. You can check these if you haven't already:

http://virtualkenneth.com/2010/12/06/bios-settings-in-a-vmware-esxivsphere-environment/

http://vmguy.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/477

Slow performance may not be only due to incorrect BIOS settings or particular RAID setup. What does the performance data in vSphere client say about VM and server load, memory and storage utilization? Maybe your VMs have too few resources (RAM, CPU) configured for their workload?

Re: New DL380 G7 with ESXI 5 very slow performance

Jags_21 — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:45:59 GMT

Hi,

The most important one is to enable the Intel_VT and No_Execute Memory Protection in the BIOS before you start the Installation, as per the RAID configuration considered that is fine, but check in the ORCA or ACU if the health status of array is fine, also check the firmware versions are upto date.

Assuming slow boot issue it could be with Software iSCSI, check the below article.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2007108

Thanks,