Does turning off the virtualization features make your CPU go faster for non-virtualized workloads?
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Unsure about the virtualization stuff but there are absolutely things you can turn off to make it run faster, depending on the CPU and usually related to over clocking.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1348623/amd-bulldozer-and-piledriver-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboard
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What virtualization are you thinking of? VirtualBox, and other Type 2 virtualization, will lower the impact as there is less using the CPU and memory on your system. The CPU won't go "faster" but it will have a lighter load so that will make things respond faster.
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My use case is that I have a server that I used to run VMs off of but which I'm now going to use exclusively for a single purpose running a single copy of 2012 R2 and would like to take advantage of as much horsepower as possible. So I'm scanning through the BIOS, trying to figure out what I should tweak for this type of utilization.
Screenshot won't seem to upload to Mango, here's a link:
http://content.screencast.com/users/creayt/folders/Jing/media/97a1d066-01ee-42fc-9aee-45d23cf5a410/2015-07-09_1558.png -
About the only thing turning off virtualization and direct IO is some additonal security if its not needed. I don't think there's currently and malware or viruses actually tying into either but with direct IO they could do some crazy stuff. Doubt it will ever happen though
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R620? nice box - you can safely ignore my post about overclocking though heheh
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@creayt said:
My use case is that I have a server that I used to run VMs off of but which I'm now going to use exclusively for a single purpose running a single copy of 2012 R2 and would like to take advantage of as much horsepower as possible. So I'm scanning through the BIOS, trying to figure out what I should tweak for this type of utilization.
So you are saying that it is HyperV that you using? I'm unclear here.
HyperV is a type 1 hypervisor, it is all on or all off. There is no "virtual" and "non-virtual" concept. Only one thing can run on Intel or AMD bare metal. So if you disable HyperV, it's gone and you are 100% bare metal for the OS.
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In all honesty I think you'll get more performance gains by tweaking the OS than you will in the BIOS of a server.
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@MattSpeller said:
In all honesty I think you'll get more performance gains by tweaking the OS than you will in the BIOS of a server.
Or adding more resources. Server 2012 r2 core is a pretty lightweight OS as far as windows goes.
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@scottalanmiller said:
So you are saying that it is HyperV that you using? I'm unclear here.
HyperV is a type 1 hypervisor, it is all on or all off. There is no "virtual" and "non-virtual" concept. Only one thing can run on Intel or AMD bare metal. So if you disable HyperV, it's gone and you are 100% bare metal for the OS.
No, sorry, I'm saying I'm starting over from scratch and going to do a fresh install of 2012 R2 on an R620, and I'm just scanning the bios, in the processor settings specifically where you can toggle things enabled or disabled ( like "virtualization technology", "hardware prefetcher", "DCU IP prefetcher", etc. ) and wondering whether ticking virtualization technology ( support ) to disabled will somehow free up the processor to go at full throttle or offer any other advantages.
Thanks guys.
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@MattSpeller said:
In all honesty I think you'll get more performance gains by tweaking the OS than you will in the BIOS of a server.
Totally agree. Don't worry, I'm going to tweak EVERRYYYYYTHINNNNNGGGGG.
Next big decision is whether to use the hardware raid controller or some sexy Storage Spaces strategy. Stay tuned for a separate thread.
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@creayt said:
@MattSpeller said:
In all honesty I think you'll get more performance gains by tweaking the OS than you will in the BIOS of a server.
Totally agree. Don't worry, I'm going to tweak EVERRYYYYYTHINNNNNGGGGG.
Next big decision is whether to use the hardware raid controller or some sexy R2 Storage Spaces strategy. Stay tuned for a separate thread.
Storage spaces is nothing new, its just a rebranding and is fragile at best.
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@MattSpeller said:
R620? nice box - you can safely ignore my post about overclocking though heheh
I'll check out that post as I start to build my new rig though for sure!
The R20 is pretty sick.
2 Xeon octacores
256 GB DDR3 1600
10x 1 TB Samsung 850 ProsWish I could use it as a local workstation
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Storage spaces is nothing new, its just a rebranding and is fragile at best.
Fragile how? It's putting up some pretty hardcore numbers in Crystal so far and has worked seemingly flawlessly on my workstation w/ an unsettling Frankenstein of old laptop drives, a few 7200 3.5"s, and a... wait for it.... thumb drive in a Raid 0 equivalent.
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@creayt said:
I'll check out that post as I start to build my new rig though for sure!
The R20 is pretty sick.
2 Xeon octacores
256 GB DDR3 1600
10x 1 TB Samsung 850 ProsWish I could use it as a local workstation
That sounds terrible man. You should send it to me and get yourself something higher end. I can't believe you use that! I'll happily pay for postage, as a friend, so you don't have to pay to recycle it.
Did you get the SSD RAID allocation stuff sorted? I think I missed the outcome of that thread
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@MattSpeller said:
Did you get the SSD RAID allocation stuff sorted? I think I missed the outcome of that thread
It turns out the datacenter configuring the original 6 SSDs into a Raid 10 demolished the over-provisioning ( you have to manually set the RAID to use less than the full capacity, neither they nor I knew that ) and so I'm at a point where I'm starting over w/ it. I now have to weigh
- The hardware RAID 10 options which don't support TRIM and which I can't be sure will trigger the underlying drive controllers to use any unallocated space for peformance enhancement
w/
- The option of using 2012 R2 Storage Spaces, which both supports trim on a per-drive level and lets you simulate a Raid 10 and claims to offer the full performance of each drive as well as maintain the per-drive overprovisioning settings ( you set each drive to be a Raid 0 at the RAID controller level and then Windows stitches them up into a software RAID of your choosing and design ).
Still in the research phase at this point, but yeah, the original strategy fell apart because overprovisioning works implicitly and the RAID controller destroys it, in other words when you configure the provisioning you do so by creating your main partition, and then leaving the rest unallocated, and the Samsung 840/850s just know to use any unallocated space for speed and durability.
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@MattSpeller said:
That sounds terrible man. You should send it to me and get yourself something higher end. I can't believe you use that! I'll happily pay for postage, as a friend, so you don't have to pay to recycle it.
God you're right, it's in the mail.
Don't get too jealous, the procs are
http://ark.intel.com/products/64583/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2680-20M-Cache-2_70-GHz-8_00-GTs-Intel-QPIand max out at 3.5 Ghz( albeit w/ a 20 MB cache ).
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@creayt said:
Next big decision is whether to use the hardware raid controller or some sexy Storage Spaces strategy. Stay tuned for a separate thread.
Since when is Windows software RAID sexy? Ewwww
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@creayt said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Storage spaces is nothing new, its just a rebranding and is fragile at best.
Fragile how? It's putting up some pretty hardcore numbers in Crystal so far and has worked seemingly flawlessly on my workstation w/ an unsettling Frankenstein of old laptop drives, a few 7200 3.5"s, and a... wait for it.... thumb drive in a Raid 0 equivalent.
20 years of being the bane of the storage industry. It's the reason that hardware RAID exists. Windows software RAID is famously the last resort for those who can't afford hardware RAID but can't risk doing nothing. It famously underperforms and falls apart.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@creayt said:
Next big decision is whether to use the hardware raid controller or some sexy Storage Spaces strategy. Stay tuned for a separate thread.
Since when is Windows software RAID sexy? Ewwww
Since it picks up all of the fumbles the H710 Perc makes: Trim support, guaranteed per-drive overprovisioning, winning in Crystal benchmarks ( so far ). I guess. Still trying to figure this all out so it may be a fool's errand. Just to be clear I'm not talking about the vanilla software RAID you can do in disk manager, this is something totally different.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@creayt said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Storage spaces is nothing new, its just a rebranding and is fragile at best.
Fragile how? It's putting up some pretty hardcore numbers in Crystal so far and has worked seemingly flawlessly on my workstation w/ an unsettling Frankenstein of old laptop drives, a few 7200 3.5"s, and a... wait for it.... thumb drive in a Raid 0 equivalent.
20 years of being the bane of the storage industry. It's the reason that hardware RAID exists. Windows software RAID is famously the last resort for those who can't afford hardware RAID but can't risk doing nothing. It famously underperforms and falls apart.
I think we're talking about two different things here. Well, I hope we are.
