Hi,
We've been doing some performance testing of ESXi 5.1 and a third party Flash memory Array. We have noticed that the performance of a W2K3 VM is poor using IOMeter when in comparison with a Physical W2K3 server or a W2K8 Server.
Current test setup is as follows: -
2 * BL685c G7's
256GB Memory
4GB FC HBA's
8TB Flash Memory Array
W2K3VM is - Windows 2003 R2 Ent Edition 32bit with all MS updates applied.
16 VCPU's
64GB memory
LSI Logic Boot and Paravirtual for Test drives (Hosted on Flash memory Array as RDM's)
I have followed the manufacturers best practices for configuration on the Array and ESXi hosts (they're test hosts at present)
With the W2K3VM I am unable to get more than 15K IOPS and 65MB per second through the VM, using 8 workers and a single test disk on the flash array. (Based on 100% Read 4Kb)
If I add multiple volumes and assign two workers per volume on this same VM, I can hit 75K IOPs and around 550MB+ per second, however there appears to be a throughput limitation on a virtual W2K3 OS when addressing a single volume. In addition file copy performance seems to be slow when copying from one RDM to another.
I do not see this limitation on a Virtual W2K8 box, or a Physical (but elderly) W2K3 Server.
Does anyone have any ideas, I've not seen anything in my searchings so far about this issue.
Many thanks,
Andrew
