Performance issues since VMWARE ESX

[unknown]

We have a client that has recently moved the DB and server
to a VMWARE virtual machine. Since then as well, the
performance of our applications have been affected. Not
only our applications but even doing the sybase dbbackup.exe
What only took a few minutes is now for ever. Of course
their IT, is very positive that this is not the issue. A
lot of CPU still left and memory they say. Please advise.
8.0.3.5002 running on Vmware ESX with Windows 2000 server.
thank you

[Josh Savill [Sybase]]

I would take a look at the performance counters in the Performance Monitor. You'll want to monitor
disk I/O and other database counters to determine where the bottleneck exists.

If the application and database ran without performance issues before VMWare, then I would compare
the difference between the actual machine configuration and the VMWare configuration. To me the
difference in the two environments is VMWare, but on a granular lever, there may be tweaks to the
VMWare system you can make to get better performance.
--
Joshua Savill
Sybase Inc. - Product Manager

Post by unknown
We have a client that has recently moved the DB and server
to a VMWARE virtual machine. Since then as well, the
performance of our applications have been affected. Not
only our applications but even doing the sybase dbbackup.exe
. What only took a few minutes is now for ever. Of course
their IT, is very positive that this is not the issue. A
lot of CPU still left and memory they say. Please advise.
8.0.3.5002 running on Vmware ESX with Windows 2000 server.
thank you

[unknown]

thank you Joshua for your comment but really do not know
what to look for that Sybase would need in VMWARE. We
tested today and took the physical DB off the VMWARE and
moved even to a tablet computer. Across the network, we
used Sybase's dbbackup and took only 2 1/2 minutes for the
backup. On the VMWARE, it took over 13 minutes. A big
difference. Customer moved to this environment to save on
hardware resources. Do not believe they have ESX training
but should be some standard items that we can recommend. DB
again is 8.03.:5002 and OS Win 2000. We are planning on
moving to Win 2003 first.

thanks

Post by Josh Savill [Sybase]
I would take a look at the performance counters in the
Performance Monitor. You'll want to monitor disk I/O and
other database counters to determine where the bottleneck
exists.
If the application and database ran without performance
issues before VMWare, then I would compare the difference
between the actual machine configuration and the VMWare
configuration. To me the difference in the two
environments is VMWare, but on a granular lever, there may
be tweaks to the VMWare system you can make to get better
performance.
--
Joshua Savill
Sybase Inc. - Product Manager

Post by unknown
We have a client that has recently moved the DB and
server to a VMWARE virtual machine. Since then as well,
the performance of our applications have been affected.
Not only our applications but even doing the sybase
dbbackup.exe . What only took a few minutes is now for
ever. Of course their IT, is very positive that this is
not the issue. A lot of CPU still left and memory they
say. Please advise. 8.0.3.5002 running on Vmware ESX
with Windows 2000 server. thank you

[Jeff Albion [Sybase iAnywhere]]

Clayton,

Post by unknown
thank you Joshua for your comment but really do not know
what to look for that Sybase would need in VMWARE.

Remember that SQL Anywhere is an application on top of the OS/machine.
We do not perform any kind of real system tuning outside of gathering
some system specifications to be reflected inside of our query
optimizer. (This is in regards to how long an average I/O takes, how
many processors, etc.)

Everything else (I/O calls, requests to the OS, etc). will be kept the
same in both instances, using POSIX-compliant calls.

---
I can think of four broad categories that affect how we will operate:

- CPU
- Does the "real" hardware have more CPUs available to it?
- Are the VMs configured to share hardware CPUs or do they have their
affinity set by ESX?

- Memory
- Does the "real" hardware have more memory available to it?
- Can the total system memory be re-allocated to give our server more
space?

- Disk
- What kind of disk are they using? What ESX device driver are they
using?

(Hint: You might be able to more accurately reflect the I/O cost of
accessing the VMWare disk by using the SQL statement: "ALTER DATABASE
CALIBRATE SERVER" -
http://manuals.sybase.com/onlinebooks/group-sas/awg0802e/dbrfen8/@Generic__BookTextView/30970;pt=30296/*#X
)

- Network
- What card/network device driver are they using?

---

Is the overall system slow, or is it just us? If you execute the same
queries on the host, are the queries running "fast" or are they still
really slow there as well?

Outside of those tips / tricks, the customer might want to have an ESX
consultant on-site to help them determine the correct setup and where
the system bottlenecks are. There are VMware performance monitoring
tools, but I've only ever seen the outputs of those tools - I don't have
any experience on where they are or how to use them.

Cheers,

[Volker Barth]

Clayton,
8.0.3.5002 is a very old build of 8.0.3 - I guess it is the original
maintenance release version.
I can't comment on running Vmware, but have you tried running later
8.0.3 EBFs like 8.0.3.5574?

Just my idea
Volker

Post by unknown
We have a client that has recently moved the DB and server
to a VMWARE virtual machine. Since then as well, the
performance of our applications have been affected. Not
only our applications but even doing the sybase dbbackup.exe
. What only took a few minutes is now for ever. Of course
their IT, is very positive that this is not the issue. A
lot of CPU still left and memory they say. Please advise.
8.0.3.5002 running on Vmware ESX with Windows 2000 server.
thank you

[d***@gmail.com]

Hello All
My company recently moved our database to a Virtual environment and since then we have been having performance issues with our Sybase databases. We moved the Sybase databases back to a physical Server and since then performance has improved. We are currently conducting a test on the VM Server with a downgraded version of the O/S (original one was Win 2008 SErver) but we just installed Win 2003 Server but we still have the same performance issue. What I noticed is that I am not able to increase the running value for data cache more than 100MB while on the physical Server we have up to 1.8GB running on the default cache.
Would like to know if anyone of you guys has installed Sybase in a Virtual environment before and if you have the same issues.