Question : VMWare Server 2.0.2 vmxnet Performance Very Poor For Windows XP Guest

Hello,

I have recently installed VMware server 2.0.2 onto a Debian Lenny 64 bit system with 1GB host networking. I have two VMs. One is RedHat AS4 Update 7 and the other is MS-Windows XP Pro SP3. Both are running 32 bit.

Whilst on the RHAS4.7 VM I can scp a large file from the guest to a real machine on the network (for the sake of argument called freddy) and get ~11-12MB/s (which is a bit less than I would get from the host machine to freddy), with Win XP I only get ~4MB/s. Ok Cygwin scp runs slower than it would on Unix/Linux's but I would expect ~9-10MB/s even so.

Both guests are set up to use Virtual Hardware version 7 and of course have the vmware tools installed. Win XP says it is using the vmxnet.sys driver and the NIC settings on the VM's property page state Flexible as the type of adapter (as you would expect).

The advanced property pane for vmxnet in WIn XP offers `auto', 100Mb/FD/HD, 10.... but no 1000Mb. The ~4MB/s speeds would correlate to a 100Mb network.

Some people on the net suggested in postings that turning of TSO (TCP segmentation offloading) on both the guest and host improved things. I also tried changing the network adaptor type to vlance, e1000 and vmxnet3. None of these made any noticeable difference.

I would be using something like VirtualBox given half a chance as this seems to be faster but I wanted to try and stick with VMware Server 2 as I need to use other people's VMs and transfer stuff to/from an ESX server.

Any ideas of how to get vmxnet going at ~1Gb/s?

Many thanks in advance.

Tony.

Answer : VMWare Server 2.0.2 vmxnet Performance Very Poor For Windows XP Guest

Yes, VM is XP SP3, Host is Vista X64 Ultimate SP2, both are fully current on Microsoft patches.

Incidentely - all of the TCP offload options are enabled on both the host and the guest vm. If I get some time I may try disabling them to see if it helps -- but I think issue is more that the guest thinks it can only get a 100 Mbit connection.