VirtualBox on Home Server

Danielm862

Danielm862

Danielm862

Associate
Joined
30 Dec 2012
Posts
15
Location
United Kingdom
Hi,

I am running a Windows 7 virtual machine on VirtualBox headless on my Windows Home Server 2011.

The server itself is a dual core 2GHz AMD Athlon with 4GB RAM, and 4 hard drives of different sizes and capacities.

I use the virtual machine on a tablet using RDP, but when i'm using it it is very very slow...
Im not sure if I am doing something wrong, or if the server just isn't capable, but loading Word 2010 Starter takes about 1-2 minutes. Making it near unusable! :(

Does anyone know any tips/tricks of VirtualBox that could help the situation?

(Just as a note, I do have a student licence of Server 2008R2 if that's better, and for hardware my budget would max out around £180-200 - If necessary)

Thanks!
 
The first few things that come to mind are hard disk performance, cpu utilisation, RAM or network performance.

How are you connecting? Over wireless?

Could you try benchmarking the hard disks that the virtual machine is on? What is the average processor usage? is the RAM being fully used and is it using the swap file a lot? How much RAM have you assigned to the virtual machine and does the host machine have enough left to perform its functions?

Does the processor support Virtualisation? Might be worth checking that too. CPU Z should be able to tell you.

You can benchmark the hard disk using crystalmark, the processor and memory usage of the server should be in task manager.
 
Unfortunately my outdated motherboard doesn't support more RAM :( :(

I am connecting over a gigabit LAN network, so that shouldn't be a problem.

I am just setting up an XP virtual machine, which does seem a LOT faster, so I may end up sticking with that.

I will get the benchmarks done as soon as the install is complete. I will post the results.

Thanks again!
 
If you are looking to upgrade your system perhaps we can find a cheap replacement motherboard and some cheap compatible memory for you? Do you have the exact specs of the processor and motherboard?

It would be in your budget if it is DDR2 your looking for and just swap the processor to the new compatible motherboard and memory.
 
I found a Win7 VM to be faster than an XP one. I didn't do any benchmarking though, so that might just be in my head.

The first question is how are you using RDP? Are you:
1)RDP'ing into the Win7 session?
2)RDP'ing into Windows Server and then using the VM through that?
3)RDPing directly into VirtualBox using VirtualBox RDP?

Have you set your VM to adjust for best performance?
(Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System -> Advanced System Properties -> Performance -> Settings... -> Adjust for best performance)

What OS is your tablet and what RDP client are you using? What's the performance like if you use the latest native Windows one from a laptop/desktop/whatever?
 
Nexy said:
I found a Win7 VM to be faster than an XP one. I didn't do any benchmarking though, so that might just be in my head.

The first question is how are you using RDP? Are you:
1)RDP'ing into the Win7 session?
2)RDP'ing into Windows Server and then using the VM through that?
3)RDPing directly into VirtualBox using VirtualBox RDP?

Have you set your VM to adjust for best performance?
(Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System -> Advanced System Properties -> Performance -> Settings... -> Adjust for best performance)

What OS is your tablet and what RDP client are you using? What's the performance like if you use the latest native Windows one from a laptop/desktop/whatever?
Click to expand...

I am using VRDP directly to Virtualbox-headless, things like start menu responds as expected, just loading things that is more of a task than it should be.
All performance settings are at minimum, I am a speed freak and don't really care for any Aero effect and what not :)

The tablet is on order, I am setting this up in preparation (should have made that clear in OP), but it will be Android 4.3.

Performance is the same when I RDP from my Windows Phone too.

jake108 said:
If you are looking to upgrade your system perhaps we can find a cheap replacement motherboard and some cheap compatible memory for you? Do you have the exact specs of the processor and motherboard?

It would be in your budget if it is DDR2 your looking for and just swap the processor to the new compatible motherboard and memory.
Click to expand...

Processor is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+, ideally I would prefer a lower powered one if possible, but when cool'n'quiet kicks in this one is not all bad.
Currently on 4X1GB DDR2, the motherboard is just one I happened to have lying around when I started building the server, no idea where it came from, my guess is an OEM.

mrbell1984 said:
That's hardware related. Requires better system.
Click to expand...

:(


One thing I have noticed is 2D acceleration is greyed out on VirtualBox settings!!
How do I enable this?
 
Guest extensions are installed on both 7 and the XP machines.

I am just installing a new graphics driver on the server, hopefully it will wake itself up...


Cheers for all the help.
 
Why not enable RDP inside Win7 and RDP straight into the guest Windows install (instead of VirtualBox)? I'd be surprised if you didn't see a marked improvement.
 
I think the amount of memory and the storage subsystem could hampering performance. Is the drive on which you guest VHD resides of similar vintage as the CPU?
 
That processor wouldn't be doing any good either, without the exact specs of every component it may be difficult to advise.

If you run CPU Z HERE it should tell you what the motherboard is and what chipset it is using. When in CPUZ could you also get the exact speed of the RAM? If it is UDIMM or RDIMM ECC?

I am also expecting since the processor is an old vintage that the correct or old motherboard drivers might not be installed. This would result in slower I/O from the hard disks and if you are using WHS2011 the drivers might not exist for the OS.

Recommend you find the motherboard specs, flash the BIOS to the latest version if it is available, try and find more recent drivers for every device. Try and flash the hard disks if a firmware is available to see if you can squeeze more performance out of it. Doubt it will improve anything too drastically but it might give it enough ummpth to be more useful to you. Usually from that era a firmware flash for the motherboard would usually allow more RAM to be installed, this is only a hunch however.

As d_brennen points out we may need the hard disk model numbers to see what those are too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom