Create guest priorities on VMware Server
The free VMware Server does not have the resource pools or shares system like ESX or ESXi. However, you can manually create priorities for your guest VMs to imitate the effects of these features. If you have a Linux host you can use the scheduler to prioritize by PID, or for any host OS, you can modify the .vmx file of each VM to set priority. In effect, both these methods create a “tug of war” design similar to the resource pool design I discussed in my post titled Designing ESX Resource Pools. The details of using both methods are discussed in this post.
Using the Linux scheduler
This tip was found at AdmiNirvana » VMware Server Tips ‘n Tricks. Be sure to check out the full post for the other VMware Server tips too. The following instructions are a cut and paste from that post:
By default, VS gives all vmware-vmx processes a nice value of “-10?. In Linux, processes with “-20? have the highest priority for system resources, and “20? have the lowest. By adjusting your busy VMs to a higher negative number (e.g. -15) and your less-intensive VMs to a higher positive number (e.g 0) you can more finely tune your server’s performance and ensure timeslices on the host are more accurately granted.
To do this, use the `renice’ command. First, find the PIDs of your vmware-vmx processes, by using `ps’:
# ps -ef | grep vmware-vmx root 3374 1 13 Mar18 ? 2-20:03:36 /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx -C /vmware/tlfmonitor/tlfmonitor.vmx -@ "" root 4833 1 15 Mar18 ? 3-04:09:11 /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx -C /vmware/DellMonitor/DellMonitor.vmx -@ ""
Then renice the appropriate PID. For example, to give the “tlfmonitor” a bit of a bump to “-12?:
renice -12 3374
Like all good things, moderation is key. Start with smaller increments and note the change, then if needed bump it again.
It should be noted that your reniced values will disappear as soon as the PID terminates.
Modifying the .vmx files
A less granular but more permanent solution is to give VMs a higher priority via the .vmx file using the priority.grabbed and priority.ungrabbed options. By default these settings are a global configuration for all VMs set in the host preferences, but each VM can be configured with it’s own independent settings.
The strategy for this method is to set the global host ungrabbed setting to low. Leave the host grabbed setting at normal. For the VMs that you want to have a higher priority browse to their respective .vmx files and add or modify the following lines:
According to sanbarrow.com’s page dedicated to .vmx file configurations, priority.ungrabbed does not have a “high” option. It does have an “idle” option, but I am unclear about exactly what this setting means.
| Priority options |
| priority.grabbed = “high” priority.grabbed = “normal” |
this host-wide settings can be over-ruled by settings in the vmx-file |
| priority.ungrabbed = “normal” priority.ungrabbed = “low” priority.ungrabbed = “idle” |
this host-wide settings can be over-ruled by settings in the vmx-file |
The above priority setting options were copied from http://sanbarrow.com/vmx/vmx-config-ini.html. Be sure to check out all the other .vmx file parameters from this site too.
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Tags: design, how to, linux, planning, vmware, vmware server
