Restricting host/virtual bandwidth

Muffin` · 7 Jun 2011 at 10:07

I'm trying to simulate remote machines and I've got two hosts and number of VM's running currently (Hyper-V).

I've had a quick look around the net and I can't see anything obvious on how to restrict the bandwidth between VMs and the host or between hosts. I'd like to restrict it between VM's on the same host ideally but if I can only do it between physical machines then so be it. Anyone have an ideas?

thanks

Skidilliplop · 7 Jun 2011 at 10:38

There are a fair few freeware apps out there that you can install within the VMs to limit their NIC speed. Ive used them before to simulate remote user environments successfully.
I'm not aware of anything that an run externally and influence a VMs network throughput.

Muffin` · 7 Jun 2011 at 10:50

Sorry I didn't explain myself well enough, what did you use to limit the NIC's? Sounds perfect!

ecksmen · 7 Jun 2011 at 11:31

Server 2008 has QoS based policies built in - you can do them either by local policy or group policy on a domain. I've not used them a massive amount, but very easy to use...

droyden · 7 Jun 2011 at 12:13

VMware has vSwitches which you can put traffic management on, hyper-v doesnt have a similar thing?

Penguin · 7 Jun 2011 at 12:47

Are the guest machines windows? If so you can try the "Network Emulator for Windows Toolkit" (NEWT)

Skidilliplop · 7 Jun 2011 at 13:17

Muffin` said:
Sorry I didn't explain myself well enough, what did you use to limit the NIC's? Sounds perfect!

I'll have a check when I get home as I don't have it here with me.

It was quite useful in that it had upload and download limits that could be asymmetric, and hence could quite accurately simulate ADSL and consumer connections.

I was using it to find minimum upload and download rates to run a particular hosted app over VPN. Which seems similar to what you're trying to do.

Penguin · 7 Jun 2011 at 14:56

Managed to track down a link for NEWT http://blog.mrpol.nl/2010/01/14/network-emulator-toolkit/

Muffin` · 7 Jun 2011 at 15:25

ecksmen said:
Server 2008 has QoS based policies built in - you can do them either by local policy or group policy on a domain. I've not used them a massive amount, but very easy to use...

Yeah tried this, managed to knock it down to 256/512 kbps

droyden said:
VMware has vSwitches which you can put traffic management on, hyper-v doesnt have a similar thing?

Unfortuantly not

Penguin said:
Managed to track down a link for NEWT I'll have a check when I get home as I don't have it here with me.

It was quite useful in that it had upload and download limits that could be asymmetric, and hence could quite accurately simulate ADSL and consumer connections.

I was using it to find minimum upload and download rates to run a particular hosted app over VPN. Which seems similar to what you're trying to do.

That sounds ideal for simulating ADSL

Also decided to stop being lazy and simulate this WAN properly with an install of Endian..