So after a solid week of research, installation, reinstallation, and troubleshooting (and not necessarily in that order) I discovered why I couldn't get my server to work even when following some excellent step by step instructions.
RemoteFX actually requires two physical GPU's. Nowhere is this mentioned in the documentation because on servers chipset (and now integrated CPU) GPU's are basically at 100% penetration. RemoteFX needs the discrete GPU that will power the VM's and enable resource sharing. RemoteFX also needs a secondary display adapter to run the video capture software on. Why this is not mentioned anywhere or had to be implemented in this way I have no idea but there you have it.
RemoteFX actually requires dual GPU's even if one is extremely weak or even software based.
Hope you aren't stuck with an adapted Dell workstation without a video out and only one PCIe x16 slot :(
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!
It always feels like it's been ages since I did an update. Today I thought again of Mr. Rogers (aka Fred Rogers) and decided to name this post in his honor even though it has nothing to do with him. RIP Fred. ;_;
Today I worked out a better way to configure my VM's. I was working the walkthrough on setting up Citrix's XenDesktop Express (which by-the-by, does not have a time limit but rather user limit) when I noticed the walkthrough video included on the DVD talked about an article with several suggestions and among them was disabling SuperFetch. After a few days of digesting the info and finding a good place to try it (school of course, not work) I figured out some of the magic :) We run a VMWare ESXi/vSphere 4.1 server at school and (long story short) have bunches of verrrry slow VM's on there that would be much more useful if they required less time. For example, an update to an instance of an Exchange server running on the machine might take 30 minutes or more. Frankly that's unacceptable. After some testing I came a few conclusions about maximizing performance of virtual machines and have written them up here.
Windows 7 VM's:
Not sure where the perfect balance lies but somewhere between 1 and 1.5 GB's of RAM the VM goes from slow and choppy to silky smooth.
Suggestions:
Set RAM at 1.5GB
Disable SuperFetch
Turn off the page file
Minimize video RAM
Exchange 2010 SP1 on 2008 R2:
Have not done much testing here but here's what I've got so far...
Suggestions:
Set RAM to 4GB
Turn off the page file
Minimize video RAM
Windows Server 2008 R2 with Global Catalog or Local Domain Controller functions:
Testing done on a Citrix XenServer install. Notably performance actually improved after disabling the page file.
Suggestions:
Set RAM to 1.5GB
Turn off the page file
Minimize video RAM
That's it for now folks, maybe I'll update this in the future (hopefully!) but probably not. I at least hope it was helpful for someone :) Thanks for reading!
Today I worked out a better way to configure my VM's. I was working the walkthrough on setting up Citrix's XenDesktop Express (which by-the-by, does not have a time limit but rather user limit) when I noticed the walkthrough video included on the DVD talked about an article with several suggestions and among them was disabling SuperFetch. After a few days of digesting the info and finding a good place to try it (school of course, not work) I figured out some of the magic :) We run a VMWare ESXi/vSphere 4.1 server at school and (long story short) have bunches of verrrry slow VM's on there that would be much more useful if they required less time. For example, an update to an instance of an Exchange server running on the machine might take 30 minutes or more. Frankly that's unacceptable. After some testing I came a few conclusions about maximizing performance of virtual machines and have written them up here.
Windows 7 VM's:
Not sure where the perfect balance lies but somewhere between 1 and 1.5 GB's of RAM the VM goes from slow and choppy to silky smooth.
Suggestions:
Set RAM at 1.5GB
Disable SuperFetch
Turn off the page file
Minimize video RAM
Exchange 2010 SP1 on 2008 R2:
Have not done much testing here but here's what I've got so far...
Suggestions:
Set RAM to 4GB
Turn off the page file
Minimize video RAM
Windows Server 2008 R2 with Global Catalog or Local Domain Controller functions:
Testing done on a Citrix XenServer install. Notably performance actually improved after disabling the page file.
Suggestions:
Set RAM to 1.5GB
Turn off the page file
Minimize video RAM
That's it for now folks, maybe I'll update this in the future (hopefully!) but probably not. I at least hope it was helpful for someone :) Thanks for reading!
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