Increasing performance of a vmware windows server 2003 vm for developers

visual studio 2010vmware-workstationwindows-server-2003windows-server-2008

I have the following machine setup as a 32bit virtual machine:

Base Machine:

HP Storage work san solution
HP ProLiant SL230s Gen8 Server 256 gb ram, 8 xeon processors.

Virtual System:

System: 

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2
Standard Edition
Service Pack 2

Computer:

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU
X7350 @ 2.93.GHz x 4
2.93GHZ 4.00 GB of RAM
SVGA II graphics driver

I am trying to run the following:

Visual studio 2010
IIS
Several Browsers
MSSQL Developer edition

The issue I have is:

I find it extremely slow, the screen just hangs/ lags at times its responsiveness is super slow. What I need to know is if I upgrade to windows server 2008 64bit will there be any benefits? Or am I better off getting a local desktop rather the a VM that I connect to over the network.

Yes I am a developer I do not get access to vmware admin panels if I did oh boy would things be different.

Apologies for the tagging not sure what vmware related tags I should of used.

Best Answer

  • UPgrade the VM to 64 bit and give it 8+ gigabyte RAM and at least 2 cores - 5 are better. Sorry, but (a) Visual Studio uses multiple cores during compile etc. and (b) 4gb are not enough when debugging etc, I regularly take my dev envvironment over the 6gb limit.

If the screen is super slow make it faster. How do you connect? Remote Desktop - that SHOULD work fine unless your network sucks big time (lets assume it does not).

Check IO performance - Visual Studio is kind of disc heavy, I got a lot of gain from moving my development physical machine to a SSD. Your SAN may be too slow.

Then check hardware wside. Maybe the machine is just overloaded CPU wise?

Anyhow, the machine is quite low end (the virtual machine) and Visual Studio kind of does not like that if you do more than just text editing. So, go 64 bit and upgrade to latest versions and give yourself a lot more cores and RAM.

With a machine like that you are better off just getting a CHEAP machine from the next supermarket - it will have multiple cores and likely more RAM ;) Then plug in an SSD ;)

Related Topic