Do you have an Nvidia Chipset, Vista and >4GB RAM?

If so, you may have experienced some strange behavior. I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a few days, but I discovered this bug shortly after upgrading to 6GB of RAM in my machine and starting the whole Server 2008/Vista/XP x64 experiment.

This is a known issue, and will cause random occurrences of the dreaded BSOD (the only one I’ve witnessed under Vista) and will be a huge source of frustration until you find the answer.

There is a MS KB article on it: 930261

I ended up removing the 2×2GB modules from my machine to install Vista, and loaded the patch immediately after install before doing anything else.

Thanks to Charlie Russel for publishing the answer in his blog over on x(perts)64.

The battle for my Desktop is (finally) over!

I have put a lot of work and thought into making this decision. I genuinely wanted to get the most out of my hardware for my current usage pattern. I have made a decision, and it wasn’t an easy one, the winner? Windows Vista Ultimate x64.

If I had stayed with Windows Server 2008, I would have had to sacrifice some programs I’m really used to, and I did not want to do that. For example, Windows Live Writer wouldn’t install, neither would Raxco Perfect Disk nor would AVG Free AV 8. The AV got me really scratching my head - what would I be able to use? I surely didn’t want to shell out for an enterprise class AV solution, nor did I want to use ClamAV, plus, I’m not a pirate so the “free/borrowed” route is out too.

Also, with Server 2008, after the initial Honeymoon, I did notice some things that bugged me performance wise. Even though all my I/O benchmarks (as informal as they were) were favorable for Server 2008, anytime I put an I/O load on the system it would come to it’s knees (such as creating a new “pre-allocated” disk in VMware. Also I couldn’t get Vista Aero running smoothly, so I reverted to Basic, but then it wasn’t smooth either - If I moved a window on my screen on top of another window it left “window droppings”- I couldn’t have that, and I did “miss” Aero - It makes everything feel so smooth!

I will give Vista this - Vista really does spread it’s wings and fly once you get over that 4GB hump - I’m really impressed (for the first time) with Vista, and since getting my machine up to 6GB I think I can live here, and live here quite comfortably indeed. The gaming scores are a little lower on Vista, however that will continue to improve with driver maturity (Nvidia hasn’t released an updated Vista x64 Driver sin Dec. ‘07, but says a new driver is on the way any day now).

So after all, My Server 2008 and my Windows XP x64 licenses will reside in VMware Virtual machines as guests on my Vista.

I have had this Vista Ultimate license since Jan of ‘07 when I received it for free as part of a promotion. I’ve never had the nerve to activate it since it never lived on my machine long enough, but today, I made that final commitment - I activated my copy of Windows Vista. It’s now done - sealed with a kiss so to speak. Vista, I think is the most well rounded choice for speed, hardware utilization, software compatibility and longevity. Sitting back and looking at it objectively, after making the decision, and deciding to stick too it - Trying to make Server 2008 work as a “Workstation” was really like trying to fit that proverbial square peg in the round hole.

The journey was a fun one, and I definitely learned a lot about all three operating systems in the process. Also thanks to all of you with keeping up with my saga - knowing I had readers reading these posts kept me motivated to find the right solution.

Another Windows Server 2008 Workstation update coming!

This is just to let you know that I’m working on another update to the Windows Server 2008 “Workstation” saga.

This whole process has been interesting to say the least! I am now in the final stages of making my decision. I think I may have hit a show-stopper…the kind of things you don’t find out until you’ve been running a system for a few days are starting to rear their ugly heads, and I’m trying now to see if I can find ways around them

I’ll update either later today, or tomorrow when I have more answers!

Windows Server 2008 “Workstation” Take 3.

The more I thought about using Win 2k8 server as my workstation OS, the more I liked the idea. I did initially have a problem with Battlefield2 locking up and then crashing to the desktop, but I eventually worked through that (details below).

I decided to do some benchmarks for you folks while I was experimenting. I went through three separate OS installs to do these, so there would be nothing to influence the scores (such as where the OS’s partitions would lie on the HDD), and I’m no professional benchmarker, so these are really only benchmarks that are relevant to me, my setup and my applications, but here goes for those who are interested!

First, I’ll recap my hardware:

AMD Athlon 64 x2 4600+ @ 2.4GHz

6 GB DDR2 800 PC6400 RAM (Crucial Ballistix 2×2GB + 2×1GB)

Main HDD: Western Digital WD3200AAKS 320 GB, 16MB Cache SATAII

First Secondary HDD: Seagate ST3120814A (7200.9) 120 GB 8MB Cache EIDE (Data only)

Second Secondary HDD: Western Digital WD2500BB 250GB 2MB Cache EIDE (Data and Virtuals)

• Side note: Even though the WD2500BB by all accounts should be slower than the Seagate, I use it for my virtual storage space since it has ALWAYS benchmarked faster than the Seagate for me (even if by a small margin).

Video Card: PNY Nvidia 7900GS 256MB PCI-E (Overclocked to 500 Core/700 MEM)

Motherboard/Chipset: Biostar TF570SLI/Nvidia Nforce 570SLi

Power Supply: Antec Neopower 650 - 650W

Operating Systems:

1. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2
2. Windows Vista Ultimate x64 Edition SP1
3. Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64 Edition SP1 (BTW, is this the first time MS has released an OS already at SP1?)

On XP x64, I ran all updates, updated drivers to latest versions, otherwise stock config (XP Themes on).

On Vista, I ran all updates, disabled UAC, Indexing/Search, Media Center, and the Sidebar (Used Vista Aero theme) and updated all drivers to latest versions.

On Server 2008 I installed the Desktop Experience package, Changed Processor Scheduling, Enabled SuperFetch, Enabled Sound, Enabled Themes (Used Vista Aero) and updated drivers to latest version.

Now for the Benchmarks:

3DMark 2006 - Standard setup, just installed and ran.

• Windows XP x64 = 5789 3D Marks
• Windows Vista x64 = 5541 3D Marks
• Windows Server 2008 x64 = 5990 3D Marks

HD Tune on Main HDD (The WD SATA)

• Windows XP x64: Maximum Transfer = 69.8 MB/sec; Burst Rate = 96.2 MB/sec
• Windows Vista x64: Maximum Transfer = 71.1 MB/sec; Burst Rate = 110.7 MB/sec
• Windows Server 2008 x64: Maximum Transfer = 75.6 MB/sec; Burst Rate = 114.3 MB/sec

Cinebench 9.5 (64-Bit Edition); Multiple CPU Rendering:

• Windows XP x64 = 742
• Windows Vista x64 = 745
• Windows Server 2008 x64 = 747

Half-Life2: Lost Cost (Video Stress Test No AA no AF - defaults for my card @ 1280×1024):

• Windows XP x64 = 127.56 Avg. FPS
• Windows Vista x64 = 85.25 Avg. FPS
• Windows Server 2008 = 115.51 Avg. FPS

Counter Strike Source (Video Stress Test - 4xAA no AF - defaults for my card @ 1280×1024):

• Windows XP x64 = 139.65 Avg. FPS
• Windows Vista x64 = 111.42 Avg. FPS
• Windows Server 2008 x64 = 121.94 Avg. FPS

Battlefield 2 (High settings on everything @ 1280×1024):

• Windows XP x64 = 95.2 FPS
• Windows Vista x64 = 80.1 FPS
• Windows Server 2008 x64 = 94.4 FPS

As I reported before, I had problems with Battlefield2 running under Server 2k8 - My sound would stutter, and then the game would lock, and eventually crash to the desktop. I discovered a trick to set up the sound system the same way it is on Vista. Look up this reg key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile

and change the value of SystemResponsiveness from 100 to 20.

VMware Workstation 6 (Vista x64 Ultimate as Guest OS -  Guest has 2GB RAM and 1 CPU: WEI Scores):

• Windows XP x64: CPU = 4.4; Mem = 5.6; HDD = 5.2
• Windows Vista x64: CPU = 4.5; Mem = 5.7; HDD = 5.3
• Windows Server 2008 x64: CPU = 4.5; Mem = 5.9; HDD = 5.3

I did not include the Graphics scores as they were obviously 1.0 across the board due to running in VMware. As a point of reference, my machine gets a bare metal score of 5.0 on CPU, 5.9 on RAM and a 5.7 on HDD  under Vista x64 (CPU higher mostly due to 2x CPU probably).

VMWare Workstation 6 (Ubuntu 8.04 as Guest OS - Guest has 2GB Ram and 1 CPU - results of hdparm -tT /dev/sda1):

• Windows XP x64 = Timed cache reads = 874.32 MB/sec; Timed buffered disk reads: 38.57 MB/sec
• Windows Vista x64 = Timed cache reads = 894.41 MB/sec; Timed buffered disk reads: 40.21 MB/sec
• Windows Server 2008 x64 = Timed cache reads = 978.39 MB/sec; Timed buffered disk reads: 45.83 MB/sec

For the Ubuntu guest, VMware paravirtual kernel support is enabled as Ubuntu supports it since 7.04 (Feistly).

For all VM’s, I have VMware set to fit all virtual machine memory into reserved host RAM.

Conclusions and Closing Thoughts:

I am not sure why Server 2008 performs so differently than Vista. I have read a lot of blog posts around 2008 as a workstation over the last few days, and I’ve seen people be downright rude and call people liars. Folks are saying that there should be no difference since they are basically the same OS underneath, and if you disable all the “vista” eyecandy it’ll even out. With my tests, I had the “eyecandy” set dead even. I can not explain why there is a difference, but there is a difference, if you don’t believe me, try it for yourself. Even more striking than the benchmarked differences the OS just “feels” so much faster and smoother than Vista, and much more solid - although, that could very well be some sort of placebo effect, and I fully admit that.

For me, however I think the winner for my HDD space is going to be Server 2008 - until something else convinces me otherwise. Again, I stress these were not “scientific benchmarks” in a 100% controlled environment, and I did them originally, strictly as my own point of reference to use in making my decision. Please take the results with a grain of salt, and know that your results may differ dramatically!

If you’ve made it this far: Thanks for reading! 

Avoiding Common Virtualization Mistakes (Part 1)

Memory Allocation to Virtual Machines:

One of the hardest parts of virtualizing an operating system in a virtual machine is learning that although the virtual machines are very much like physical machines in many different ways, and can perform many of the same tasks they are at the same time very different beasts.

One of the biggest mistakes folks make when they first start virtualizing is allocating the wrong amount of memory to the virtual machines (usually too much).

There are several factors to consider when deciding how much memory to allocate the virtual:

• What OS will the virtual be running?
• What applications will the virtual be running?
• How much RAM is in the host machine?
• Will the host be a workstation or a server?
• What OS will the host be running?

Each of these 5 variables needs special and equal consideration. I will break down each question and give you some pointers for making an educated decision when creating your virtual machines. These variables also ring true across all virtualization platforms no matter if it’s VMware, XEN, KVM, Hyper-V or Virtual Box.

What OS will your virtual be running?

A good starting point for determining the minimum amount of RAM to allocate to your virtual machine will come from the documentation for the guest OS. Check to see what the publisher’s minimum RAM requirement is. Also, for a Linux or UNIX based guest OS; check the requirements for the desktop environment or Window Manager you will be running in the Virtual (if running on at all).

What Applications will your virtual be running?

Besides checking the minimum RAM requirements for your guest OS, you need to take into account how much memory your applications on the virtual will need as well. Again, consult documentation, and understand that you will usually need to add about half of what the application recommends to the overall system memory in the virtual over the OS requirement for comfortable performance. Also, decide now how much you will be multitasking in the virtual OS and take that into consideration as well.

How much RAM is in the host machine?

We will also address the questions “Will the host be a workstation or a server?” as well as “What OS will the host be running?” in this section as well. To start with, running any modern OS on the host, I wouldn’t attempt virtualization without at least 1GB of RAM in the host machine, and preferably 2 GB. Obviously, the more RAM you have in the host, the more RAM you can allocate to your virtual machines. Just how much RAM you can allocate to your virtual machines will depend on the answers to the next two questions. If your host machine is to be a workstation, and you need it to be responsive to host applications while running the virtual, you will need to be careful with how much RAM you allocate to your virtual machines or you will be in “Swap City” before you know it. Also, on the other hand, if your host is a dedicated VM Host server, you can leave less RAM for the host OS and allocate more to the virtual machines since you will not be interacting with the host on its own level.

Also, different host operating systems handle memory very different ways. Generally speaking, Linux will use up more physical memory before it starts to swap and slow down on you than Windows. Taking all this into consideration, if your machine is a workstation, try to keep at least half of your hosts RAM free. If you are running a dedicated host server, you can use up RAM for virtual machines all the way down to the minimum requirement for your host OS and be comfortable.

Real world examples:

My “In a pinch” VMware-Server host:

I have a machine at work that has been in service since October and was set up in a pinch for one of our programmers who needed a quick place to set up two XP VMs to do Delphi builds. I didn’t have a physical host server at the time with enough free resources to meet his request, and we were still in the planning stages of our XenServer project. I did have a recycled desktop workstation which had an Athlon 64 3000+ and 2GB of RAM, so I loaded up Ubuntu Server (CLi only install) and VMware-Server. I gave each virtual 896MB of RAM leaving Ubuntu-Server 256MB for itself. That machine has been running strong since and has only been rebooted once. Sadly, this little soldier is about to be retired as I’m moving those two VMs to a Xen host soon. The moral is, not having the overhead of a Desktop Environment or the need to interact with the host OS gave me the freedom to allocate as much RAM as possible to the VMs and still have them (and the host) perform well.

My “test” Xen Host server:

This guy was an oddball out and has a slightly different revision of the Xeon (Clovertown vs. Harpertown) from the rest of the servers in our Xen Farm. It has become my “test” Xen host and will host test and build workstations for various departments and will be the home of those two XP VMs in the above paragraph eventually. This guy is actually a nice machine –it’s a 2U Dell Poweredge with Dual Quad-Core Xeon Clovertown 2.66GHz chips, but at the moment only has 8GB of RAM (to be upgraded to 16GB or 32GB soon). Right now this guy is sitting at 88% memory utilization running 2 Vista VMs at 1GB each, 4 XP VMs at 512MB each, 2 Windows 2000 VM’s at 512 each and 2 Server 2003 VMs at 1GB each, and each VM is very responsive. Our “production” Xen hosts are Dual Harpertowns with 16GB each and will eventually see similar memory utilization (although on fewer VMs with more RAM each).

My personal Workstation (at home):

This guy was a beast at one time, but seems a little tame now (at least processor wise). This machine has an AMD Athlon 64X2 4600+ (2.4GHz), 6GB DDR2 800 RAM and 3 Hard Drives for a total of nearly 1TB of space and is running Windows XP x64 edition. I do give this machine a beating though, as I use it to test out different operating systems and I have a few VMs on here that I actually use regularly. Having 6GB of system RAM gives me the freedom to allocate a nice chunk of RAM to my VMs. I have an Ubuntu 8.04 and a Vista Business Virtual that have 2GB of RAM each and I honestly don’t even notice when they are running. RAM is getting very cheap right now, so if you are serious about virtualization on your workstation PC, invest in as much RAM as you can afford and/or as much as your Motherboard and OS will handle. Remember, you must have an x64 machine and an x64 host OS to utilize more than ~3.25 GB of RAM.

Good Luck and happy virtualizing!

 

Windows Server 2008 as a Workstation OS (Part Deux).

Well, it’s been a couple of days since I installed Server 2008 and set it up as a workstation, so I wanted to follow up since I’ve had a couple of days (and a few dedicated hours this evening) to live with it.

I did find some showstoppers for me. Although the OS seems faster than Vista (and nearly as fast as XP), and benchmarks quite well (with synthetic benchmarks), I did not find the WOW! factor that the posters I linked to in my original post found. Also, I found gaming support to be quite poor.

As for performance, it was one of those things I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Somehow the GUI seems much more responsive than on Vista, which to start off gives a feeling of “wow, this is faster than Vista”. However, I found application start times to lag behind Vista a bit. My machine is an AMD 64 x2 4600+ with 6GB of DDR2 800 RAM, and my main drive is a WD 3200AAKS 7200 RPM SATAII w/ 16MB Cache buffer (I have 2 older drives I use for Data storage only). Now, it’s not a full out killer top of the line system anymore, but it shouldn’t take it 15 seconds to start Firefox. I know 15 seconds sounds trivial, but it feels like forever when you are used to it opening instantly.

With gaming, I couldn’t get Battlefield2 to run for more than 5 minutes to save my life! Also, HL2 Lost Cost and CS:Source gave good overall FPS results in the “Stress Tests” (average FPS given at the end of the test), but the graphics looked “jumpy” on the screen - it wasn’t smooth at all and the FPS was constantly going up and down during the test - something I hadn’t experienced before.

I hear you now, “It’s a server OS, it’s not meant for gaming!”, and that is true, but that is a must if I was going to run it as my desktop OS. My main reason for wanting my desktop machine back on a Windows platform was so I could get online w/ my friends and play CS and BF2. I kinda miss it!

Now for a couple of pluses - the OS seems to handle cpu utilization/prioritization better than Vista - 3DMark gave a GREAT CPU score. Also, VMware Workstation was flat out flying even with (the hard to virtualize) Vista running as a guest.

All and all I could see this being a super option for someone needing a true “workstation” - not a home PC - someone who is coding or perhaps dealing w/ 3D modeling would I’m sure be quite happy.

I’ve spent the last couple of hours setting up my machine with Windows XP Pro x64 Edition (x64 is a must with 6GB of ram, and 6GB) and I plan to STAY HERE until I get a new machine (which will definately be after Windows 7 is out).

As a side note, for those who are interested, I’m working up a full review (from a musicians standpoint) on Ubuntu Studio, which is working beautifully on my laptop!

Windows Server 2008 as a Workstation OS.

Ok, so I’ve had this copy of Windows Server 2008 sitting on my bookshelf next to my desk for a few weeks now planning to eventually installing virutalized just to play around, but I recently came across some interesting blog posts and articles about setting up Server 2008 as a workstation OS. Kinda like a anti-Vista so to speak. You can find the articles I read here, here, here, here and here.

Now a word of assurance for the Linux users who follow my site - no I haven’t stopped running Linux at all, I’ve just decided that after all a Windows OS is what’s best for me on my Desktop system. I still have 2 different flavors of Linux dual-booting on my laptop (well, actually it’s triple booting - Server 2003, Ubuntu Studio 8.04 and Foresight 2.0.1 XFCE Edition).

Now I won’t rehash what was included in the articles I linked above, they are very informative, and I reccomend that you read them if you are going to try this for yourself.  I will however give you an overview of my brief impressions.

I loaded the x64 version of the OS and here’s what I found. First off, it’s fast. It’s faster than Vista on this same machine, it’s faster than ANY Linux Distro I’ve tried on this machine (and you all know I’ve tried plenty), it’s faster than DesktopBSD was on this system, and I almost dare say it’s faster than XP Pro x64. As mentioned in some of the above articles, I’m not sure why it’s faster than Vista - they should be about the same, as they are supposed to be both running the same Kernel as of Vista SP1, but it definatly is faster - both in “feel” and in benchmarks.

After going through the above guides, it will look like Vista, and honestly the best way I can describe my experience so far is that it “looks” like Vista but it “feels” like XP. That’s probably a bad analogy, but it’s the best I can come up with right now

I do want to add: Server 2008 is an expensive OS. If you want to try this, please obtain a license legally. I recieved mine from a friend who had recieved it as a freebie and was not going to use it. There is a trial version available from Microsofts web site if you are interested as well.

Also, here’s an added plus for you - after enabling the Desktop Experience package, and enabling Aero I discovered that none of the Vista wallpapers are included (in fact no wallpaper is included except a low-res grainy Server 2008 logo). I came across this site while searching “vista wallpaper” to see if I could find a pack w/ the Vista ‘papers in it. Apparently this guy is the person who took the pictures that became some of the default wallpapers, and there is a downloadable pack on that page with some that didn’t make the cut, but some are stunning in their own right.

And now the finished product: