Windows Server Performance Team Blog : Increase VMBus buffer sizes to increase network throughput to guest VMs.

Well thanks to the sterling efforts of one man and his EFI hacking skills, we now have a solution as this image demonstrates. The image on the left shows the result of the VMWare Virtualization Technology test CD confirming that VT is now enabled on my Vaio Z11.

I’ve mirrored his code and instructions here in case his site disappears, read more after the jump…

Download this EFI application and put it on a FAT32 formatted USB stick in the \EFI\BOOT directory.

Boot from the USB stick. When this USB stick is plugged in to your laptop it will boot from it regardless of your settings to deny booting from external devices.

If all goes well you will see the following message:

> Welcome to GRUB!
>
> Entering rescue mode...
> error: file not found
> grub rescue>

At this prompt, type:

setup_var

You’ll be informed of the risks but most importantly you should see confirmation that the tool has found the correct setup variable. You want to see the message say “the GUID should match the expected GUID”. If it does not don’t continue – visit the site of the author and let him know.

Since this definitely works on a Vaio Z11, you should have got this far and can now look at the current setting of the VT offset which is at 0x1af. Type:

setup_var 0x1af

Verify that the variable is set to 0×00. If it is not, do not continue.

Assuming that the variable is as expected, we’ll change the setting, locking VT for your processor to ON:

setup_var 0x1af 0x1

You can verify that this change has been accepted by typing:

setup_var 0x1af

And confirming that the output is now 0×01.

That’s it! Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and remove the USB stick. You can now check that VT is enabled using whichever tool you prefer. I confirmed mine from a VMWare boot CD and also within Windows using Steve Gibson’s SecurAble tool.

I love my Sony Vaio Z.  It’s a wonderful bit of kit – exactly the power/portability ratio I wanted.  It has enough grunt to play the odd game in “Speed” mode while giving 6 hours of battery life on wireless in stamina mode.  Not to mention to gorgeous 1600×900 LED screen and the built in 3G wireless.

I have one problem with it and it’s a failing of Sony’s decision making rather than any particular problem with the kit.  Sony disable the Intel Virtualization Technology in the Core 2 Duo on all their Vaio machines.  I’ve seen no valid rationale for this other than “We don’t support VT on the Vaio range.“  This is absurd since all the Core 2 Duo chips feature Intel Virtualization Technology and I can’t imagine how having it switched on would adversely affect Vista or XP (the two Operating Systems Sony officially supports).

If this were a consumer laptop I could understand – but it’s specifically targeted at business users.  In my business I make extensive use of both Microsoft and VMWare’s virtualisation systems – both of which run much faster on hardware that has the VT functionality enabled.  There are a good number of people on various forums spitting blood about this issue so I’m not the only one complaining.

There is light, of sorts, at the end of this tunnel.  Since Sony have done this before on other machiens in the Vaio series, people have managed to re-enable VT by using BIOS editing tools to flip the right register.  Unfortunately it requires intimate knowledge of the BIOS – knowledge that we won’t have until Sony release a BIOS update that can be reverse engineered.  If we’re very lucky Sony will make amends by releasing a BIOS update that allows us to enable VT in the BIOS interface proper.

The worst part of this is that we (Vaio Z owners) didn’t know that VT was disabled until after we bought the machines.  I know a number of people have returned their units and bought Toshiba or Dell machines that haven’t been crippled by the vendors.  Sony advertised a Core 2 Duo Mobile processor, they didn’t mention in any literature that they’d be disabling bits of the processor for no reason.

Sony, if you’re reading this – please give us control over the entire processor and let us enable VT.

The image (click to embiggen) you see here is a screen capture of one of my virtual machines suffering some form of graphic corruption.  It should look like this.  This happens often enough now that it is seriously irritating.  I can make it go away by closing VMRC and reconnecting to the server, but I’d rather not have to do so several times a day (sometimes multiple times an hour).

I’m running Virtual Server 1.1.603.0 EE R2 SP1, and all my VMs have Virtual Addition version 13.813 installed.  The VMRC client which came with R2 SP1 is version 1.1.603.0.

The same corruption is visible from machines with ATI and NVidia graphics cards, running XP SP2, Vista or Server 2003.

So – why is this happening, and how can I stop it?

Anyone?

Well no, actually, it wasn’t.  Turns out the user I’d created for launching the VMs on the x64 box wasn’t exactly the same as the user on the old box.  It wasn’t a member of the Administrators group.  So note to self: if you want them to be able to access the NIC, start your VMs in a user context that has Admin rights.   I’m sure with a bit of testing I could find the URAs that would lock this down with a little more granularity, but the Administrator right blanket fits for now!

sfc /cachesize=0
sfc /purgecache

Then perform the standard compaction routine in Virtual PC/Virtual Server. For even more benefit, see also the Invirtus Optimizer which is outstanding, taking a 4.2GB VHD down to 1.4 by removing the cruft it didn’t need.

I couldn’t believe that any publication would bother to publish something like that, even as an “opinion” piece in a student paper and even only on their website.  The author, who may be a veritable genius when it comes to philosophy, clearly has no idea what he (she?) is talking about when it comes to technology.  They don’t seem to understand the difference between emulation, virtualisation and dual booting, and have apparently very little grasp of hardware specifics…

When a Mac starts to emulate a Windows platform completely, the computer must provide additional voltage to provide the computing power.

Ignoring the author’s misconception that the Mac is emulating Windows (it is running Windows natively on an X86 chip remember…) what’s this about additional voltage?!  What?!  The intel chip in my MacBook – when running XP – is pulling the same power as when it runs OS X, or the same as the identical chip that runs Windows XP in the latest HP notebook.  Windows XP playing games such as UT2004 on the MacBook causes it to generate as much heat as OS X playing the Universal Binary of UT2004.  It’s hot (really hot), granted, but the idea that Windows is magically making the processor run hotter than OS X will ever allow is false.  It just gets as hot only quicker.

getting a Mac to run PC games will result in heartache – this I can guarantee

The author doesn’t specify exactly what heartache it will result in… My MacBook runs Half Life 2, CountStrike: Source, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Rise of Nations in some cases significantly faster/smoother than my Dell.  What heartache?  Heat-ache maybe, but no worse than OS X causes!

For reiteration, Macs cannot run Windows like PCs can.

Urm, yes.  Yes they can.  That’s rather what all the fuss was about when Apple put Intel chips inside.  INTEL.  x86 chips.  The same instruction set that nearly every PC on the planet uses to run, oh, for example, Windows!  Do you think the author understands the difference between a PPC and an Intel chip, and the reason why a Mac can now run exactly like a PC?

I can’t bring myself to refute the fifth paragraph (“My third point references to the industry.”) as it is so full of misunderstandings of the technology, the businesses involved and the computer industry’s recent history that it’s just not worth it.

Boot Camp crashes and burns?  Hardly.  It’s beta software.  It came with a warning.  Anyone who chose to ignore that warning and install it on a production machine deserves any hassle they get.  That said, my installation of Boot Camp was utterly without problems and I’ve heard lots of other positive reports on various forums.  I’m grateful to Apple for providing Boot Camp and the driver suite – I’d just like some of my minor niggles addressed!

• No Audio Routing
  If you plug headphones into the headphone socket audio continues to come out of the speakers. This is known (and documented by Apple) but is still irritating. If I’m in the office I quite often listen to mp3s/the radio on headphones. Also, when I play games I nearly always do so with headphones on for the immersive experience…
• Limited Bluetooth Support
  I use my phone’s Bluetooth headset as a headset in games that support it (UT2004, CounterStrike) and for Skype calls. Either the driver in the MacBook doesn’t support the headset profile, or the hardware doesn’t support it. Either way, it’s an annoying limitation.
• Heat
  This is the real killer. The MacBook Pro runs hot… Even in OS X – when you push the CPU – it gets very hot. Running in XP though, without the advanced power management, it gets hot quickly. So hot in fact that the grill to the left of the keyboard becomes painful to touch. That’s no good for prolonged periods of typing!
• The Trackpad
  In OS X there is a tickbox for trackpad settings that “ignored unintended input” – so if you knock it with your wrist while typing it knows to disregard it. Not so for XP. Try typing for any length of time and you find the cursor jumping all over the place as you accidentally click all over your document. Grrr!

I imagine that further updates to the beta will fix some of these niggles, but for now I’m still using the Dell for day to day work and games.

One thing I did manage to do with the MacBook Pro was remap the keyboard. Now \ is in the correct place (next to left shift) as is the back tick (next to the 1 key) and I’ve given myself a right-alt key (the right command key) and a del key (next to the left cursor). So I can hit ctrl-alt-del and I have a right-alt to control MS Virtual Server properly now!

It’s a fantastic games machine; HalfLife 2, UT2004 and RoN all perform flawlessly… I just worry about the heat. I hope Apple issue a BootCamp driver update for APM.

You will need:

• A copy of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
• cdrom-1.21.iso from the m0n0wall site
• a blank virtual floppy image (you can create this inside MSVS)
• a real or virtual machine from which you will access your “router”

Create a Virtual Machine

Using the Virtual Server interface, create a virtual machine called “router” (or some other meaningfull name).  It only needs about 64Mb of memory, and it doesn’t need a hard disk.  (Click “Attach a virtual hard disk later”).  Attach the first virtual network adapter to the Internal Network for now.  We’ll add more NICs and change the network configuration later.

Once the VM is created, you’ll have a “router” folder under your Virtual Server default path.  Copy the cdrom.iso you downloaded earlier to this directory.

In the Virtual Disks menu click Create->Virtual Floppy Disk.  Select the location of your router folder in the drop down, and give it a sensible name.  RouterFloppy.vfd would be fine.

You’ve now got all the files you need created:

Now go into the config for your router’s VM.  Virtual Machines->Configure->Router.

Select the CD/DVD drive.  Hit the known image files drop down and select the cdrom.iso you downloaded and copied across.  Click OK.

Now select the Floppy drive. Again, hit the known floppy disks drop down and select the floppy you created earlier.  Click OK.

Now add two more NICs.  I add two because m0n0wall always expects the second NIC to be used for sharing a WAN connection (broadband internet) and it’s easier to ignore this interface and route between the LAN and OPT interfaces.  (This will make sense once you see the web interface.)

You should now have a 64Mb virtual machine with three NICs, a CDROM attached to the ISO and a floppy attached to our routerfloppy.

Starting the Router

Starting the router for the first time is a bit fiddly as the VM will attempt to boot off a non-existent hard disk – failing to use the CDROM.  When this happens you’ll see:

To get round this you’ll need to turn off the virtual machine and then as soon as you’ve turned it on, hit DEL to get into the BIOS:

Once in the BIOS, select the Boot menu, and then Boot Device Priority.  Change the 1st Boot Device to CDROM, then hit F10 to Save and Exit.

The Virtual Machine will restart, and start loading m0n0wall from the CDROM.  The floppy is there to save our router configuration.

After a bit of virtual thrashing about, the router will present it’s default startup screen:

(The “microuptime went backwards” seems to be an artifact of running in the virtual environment.  It doesn’t affect the running of the router.)

You’ll need to configure which router interfaces are connected to which physical (or in our case, virtual) NICs.  Hit 1, and follow the instructions – I usually say “no” to VLANs, and then assign de0 to LAN, de1 to WAN and de2 to OPT.  Allow the router to reboot once configured.

Now set the IP and subnet of the LAN interface – this will be your management IP.  Press 2.

In this example we’ll set it to 192.168.0.2 in a /24 with no DHCP:

That microuptime() thing gets really annoying.  Thankfull that’s the last time we’ll need to look at the console for a while.

The Web Interface

Remember that when we created it we put the router’s NICs on Virtual Server’s “Internal Network”.  If you have a virtual OS (Windows, Linux, whatever) running on your Internal Network you can connect to the router from that.  If not, you’ll need to move at least the LAN IP onto another network.

For our purposes I’m connecting it to my external network card – this way my real machine will be able to access the virtual router’s management interface.  Go into the configuration for the virtual machine, then select the Network Adapters link:

Once that’s done, you’ll be able to connect to http://192.168.0.2/ from your real machine.  Try it.  Your username is “admin” and the password is “mono”.

We used m0n0wall to route between three different sites using its traffic shaping features to simulate lossy and high latency links.  I may go into the details of how to set that up, although the manuals on their site are pretty clear.

m0n0wall combined with Virtual Server mean you can do some pretty smart infrastructure simulation.  I’ve successfully routed between virtual machines across multiple host machines and real machines on the same networks.  Neat.