Virtual Machine Settings and Performance (my non scientific tests)

I recently performed some very subjective non scientific benchmark results for how my new pc runs MOSS in a VMWare virtual machine. The pc is a Dell Dimension 9200 Dual Core with 3 gigs of memory, and unless I mention it specifically the tests will have both cpu's turned on (you can turn one off in the vmware settings), 1.5 gigs of memory for the vm, a 20 gig hd pre-allocated to the vm, and will have hardware virtualization enabled in the bios of the host machine. I used PassMark Performance Test v6.1 trial edition to do the testing. I mainly just wanted to learn a little more about how VM performance works, since I'm fairly new to the concept. Hopefully someone else can learn something useful from my homework.

Based on my readings of the test (and perhaps should have been obvious from the start) its best to run with both cpu's on, hardware virtualization on, and with the vm installed on a seperate internal hard drive.

Host machine
(bigger numbers are better)
---------------------------------------
CPU  1079.6
memory  460.0
disk  332.8
passmrk  440.8

========================

1 CPU On
Yes hardware virtualization
VM on same HD
----------------------------
CPU  540.7
memory  397.7
disk  113.4
passmrk  240.3

Both CPU's
No hardware virtualization
VM on same HD
----------------------------
CPU 1053.7
memory  423.9
disk  142.2
passmrk  389.2

Both CPU's
Yes hardware virtualization
VM on same HD
----------------------------
CPU 1066.5
memory  429.6
disk   110.1
passmrk  387.3

Both CPU's
No hardware virtualization
VM on Seperate Internal HD
----------------------------
CPU 1023.0
memory  430.3
disk  285.0
passmrk  445.1

Both CPU's
Yes hardware virtualization
VM on Seperate Internal HD
----------------------------
CPU 1084.9
memory  430.7
disk  462.1
passmrk  478.6

Both CPU's
Yes hardware virtualization
VM on External USB2.0 HD
----------------------------
CPU 1057.7
memory  377.7
disk  105.7
passmrk  409.

New SharePoint 2007 Publishing Portal

As my friends John Ross (on Moss) and Andrew Connell have mentioned already today, the new web portal for Orange County Public Schools has just gone live.

The team I work for was responsible for transitioning their website from a loose confederation of around 50 department managed websites into one unified Microsoft SharePoint 2007 publishing portal. I think the key differentiator for the site (compared to many other public SharePoint sites) is that it is maintaned not by a central team, but instead by these 50 departments and their respective employees. As for the initiative, I was primarily responsible for all of the public facing UI elements of the portal. This included several customized masterpages, layouts, tons of css, custom webparts, custom XSL transformations, and restyling of several out of the box webparts. We had a lot of fun working on the project, but there was also considerable pain as well. Our team owes a great debt to the entire SharePoint blogging community as a whole for getting us through these rough spots because when this project began there were very few official sources of information on SharePoint. So, thanks to all of you!

You can read a lot more about the initiative on John Ross's blog. Or you can check the site out for yourself at www.ocps.net