artykul8

I have been using VMware virtualization for quite a few years now, and even though it is generally fast and reliable platform, it does require some extra tuning to improve its performance. Here is a brief collection of tweaks that I personally use on Windows and Mac to speed up and improve I/O performance of VMware virtual machines. These tweaks have become particularly useful in the past couple of years, since larger amount of available RAM on computers and desire to reduce unnecessary write operations to SSD drives, such as full memory swap files.

Tweak: Disable memory swap files .vmem files

In the VMware settings.ini file add the following line:

mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"


Settings.ini file is located file either at C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Workstation\ or C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Workstation\ folders, depending on your operating system.

Note: Unfortunately this parameter does not work for VMware Player, as it always creates virtual machine’s full memory swap file.

For VMware Fusion on Mac and Linux instead of mainMem.useNamedFile you have to set mainMem.backing flag.
VMware Fusion Config files are located at: /Users/username/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/preferences and /Users/username/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/config

mainMem.backing = "swap"


Tweak: Disable log files for VM
Open your .vmx file in a text editor and add the following line:

logging = "FALSE"


Alternatively you can specify a different location to store the log file, if you ever need them:

log.filename = "c:\Windows\Temp\vm1.log"


Tweak: Disk & Memory I/O Performance Optimization

Disable memory trimming:
MemTrimRate = "0"

Disable page sharing:
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"

Disable snapshots if you are not using them and prefer full backups:
snapshot.disabled = "TRUE"

Disable scale down of memory allocation:
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"

Tweak: Disable Unity Mode

Unity might be a great feature for running virtual desktops operating systems, but it is not the most useful for virtualizing server OS. As a sign of enabled unity is presence of GuestAppsCache folder with a large number of files in its appData-subfolder. In order to disable it for your VM, open your .vmx file in a text editor and add the following line:

unity.allowCompositingInGuest="TRUE"

References:

VMware: Troubleshooting hosted disk I/O performance problems
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1008885

VMware: Disk I/O Performance Tips
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_performance_diskio.html

VMware: Defragmentation overview
http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2008/10/tip-defragmenta.html

VMware: Disabling the Workstation Log File or Storing the Log File in a Different Location
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1028

Blog: How can I prevent VMware Workstation Unity Mode from disabling Windows Aero?
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/virtualization2/q-how-can-i-prevent-vmware-workstation-unity-mode-from-disabling-windows-aero-

If you are trying to delete GTP or EFI partition on your hard drive under Windows Server 2008/7/Vista using management console are you out of luck. However, here is the easiest way to get around it:

Start command prompt and run diskpart.exe in command prompt issuing these commands as per illustration below:
d:\path>diskpart.exe
DISKPART> list disk
DISKPART> select disk x
DISKPART> clean

Please note, the reason for using ‘clean’ command instead of ‘delete volume’ is that ‘delete volume’ crashes diskpart utility when attempting to delete GTP/EFI partitions. Also outdated diskpar.exe utilitiy, which is frequently used for aligning physical partitions and is still quite popular for SSD optimization, cannot even read disk layout containing GTP or EFI partitions.

Great post: How to Delete GPT Partition or EFI from Mac Hard Disks In Vista or XP
Reference: A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility
Diskpar & Diskpart in server environment: Disk Partitioning Offset
Disk partitioning Alignment: Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server
SSD Optimization guide: OCZ Technology Forum