Hi All

I've got a HP ML110 G6 Sever with a Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3430 @ 2.40GHz (4 core), 12GB Ram , 2 x 1TB and 1 x250GB Drives.

I'm wondering whether I would get better performance from this with a single OS installed or whether running it under VMware as 2 virtual PCs.

My instinct tells running a couple of virtual PCs would be better, but has anybody looked into this already? Any thought on this would be appreciated?

Hi All

I've got a HP ML110 G6 Sever with a Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3430 @ 2.40GHz (4 core), 12GB Ram , 2 x 1TB and 1 x250GB Drives.

I'm wondering whether I would get better performance from this with a single OS installed or whether running it under VMware as 2 virtual PCs.

My instinct tells running a couple of virtual PCs would be better, but has anybody looked into this already? Any thought on this would be appreciated?

I've played around with VM's in the past with different combinations of host and VM OS's (Windows + Linux, Linux + Windows, Win + Win and Linux + Linux).

In all cases I found that the overhead of the VM program (I used VMWare) negated any possible gain. Both Windows and Linux VM's ran slower than the same OS in Native mode.

Unless you have a specific reason for wanting to run BOINC on a VM, such as wanting to run different projects on each VM. I wouldn't recommend it.

T.A.

Cheers for your quick answer.

I wasn't sure as any processor can only be pushed so far whether it's VM or not. I thought maybe the fact that I could set the 2 VMs so that they were running on different disks optimizing the Hard disks might be a bonus.

I do run malaria control as well. But I suppose I could also install a cheap GPU into my server in native mode which would help tremendously.

Cheers,

Steven

Intuitively two VMs will be lower than a single instance of BOINC running S@H on a multi-core (or multi-thread) machine. I say this because there is an overhead associated with running VMs - the VM manager is a task that consumes some CPU cycles to sort out things like disk and video access. VMs are great for low CPU use jobs, but S@H is a very heavy suer of the CPU - on my 6 core all 5 cores are maxed out most of the time. Also S@H is a low disk demand process, only accessing the disk at the start of a new work unit and about once a minute to do a check-point save so there is little to be gained by having uber-fast disk access by whatever technology.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

IIRC a 3% hit in performance is a "best case" when running in a VM.

Another option to consider is to run BOINC on the native OS & then VM's on top of that. That is what I am currently doing with my 24 core box.
I am using Windows as the native OS with VirtualBox for the VM's. It is a larger hit in performance for the VM's, but the VM's I am running are very low load, such as DHCP & DNS. So if they have to wait a few extra clock cycles it doesn't really matter.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Cheers for the heads up guys it looks like native is the way to go.

HAl9000.. I'm loving the 24 Cores. You've got to love progress. ;-)

Also, I havn't used Virtual box before but I might have to take a wee look at it.

Steven