Boost Your PPD with VMWare - Look inside for easy guides!

[zlojack]

Everyone gets a bit leery when talk of setting up virtual machines and crazy Linux installs to boost your PPD, but I've found a couple of really good guides which, with a minimum of technical knowledge and some patience, can have you doubling your PPD from your CPU with the SMP client!

That's right DOUBLE! My i7 920 was running around 3.5k PPD and now it's up to about 7k PPD thanks to this setup.

All this without losing the amazing PPD that your GPU clients put out in Windows and not having to mess around with dual booting and other such crap.

I recommend you follow both guides to make sure you get everything set up right and make sure to go in and do the edits to set the memory higher from the second guide. I read both of them and they helped me get set up quite painlessly in about 30 minutes or less.


Here is an excellent guide from the EVGA Forums - Full Credit goes to Ruredee over at EVGA for this guide, I just reposted.

ORIGINAL: lsclincoln

After looking over the F@H section I noticed that no guide was around to setup a VMWare SMP. I figured I could try. The setup Im running nets me between 4000-4500 ppd on a Q6600 at 3.2 while running one GPU2 at the same time.

Virtualization or VT must be enabled in bios and your processor must support.

Step 1
Go to Temporary Maintenance - VMware - VMware and download the latest version(2.5.1). BTW you'll have to register to download.

Click download.



Then this screen is next requiring you to register.


Choose the home/personal use options.
Once registered you'll be allowed to download.

Step 2
Go to Folding Virtual Appliance and download the virtual machine.



Step 3
Install VM Player from step one. After install restart computer as required.




Step 4
Extract the folding appliance.In my picture I just extract to desktop. You can extract to wherever you'd prefer.




If you are using a dual core then you'll only need to extract once. If using a quad then rename the extracted folder and extract another instance. I renamed both of my extracted folders like shown.




Step 5
Open the extracted folder and doubleclick the bottom file.




This will open the VMPlayer and start the virtual machine. And will bring you to this screen.




At this point the computer is folding and should be reflected in cpu usage. Now to configure.
Type the Ip address (192.168.1.69 in my case) in your web browser. You should see this if everything is running correctly.



Click Reconfigure then you'll see this screen.



After configuring to your liking click reconfigure at the bottom. The instance will have to be restarted in order for the changes to take affect. Also this is how I set mine up to run two on my Q6600. I chose 2 cpu per smp.

Now go back to the VM Player as it now needs to be restarted for the changes to take affect.




Click VMPlayer>Troubleshoot>Reset.

Now its running and configured. Wasnt so hard even with my lack of skill explaining. If on a Quad and you extracted two folders then do the same setup as the first.

Now for a lil fine tuning.

After I have both running I go to the task manger to set the priority and affinity.



The top two are the virtual machines. Im running two so if only running one you'll only see one. I set them both at low priority and assign two cores for each instance.



To monitor with FAHMON or Fahspy simply point either monitoring app to
\\<your ip>\c\etc\folding\1\


I hope this helps people. I hope its not confusing and I will try to make it easier in time.

Like I said at the beginning I get 4000-4500 ppd from my Q6600 at 3.2ghz using this setup. Alot more than Windows SMP.


FahSpy Link fahspy150.zip Download File on FileFront

And another similar and equally excellent guide from XtremeCPU Forums - Full Credit to brentpresley, I just reposted here

Here is what is necessary to do what I set out for:
0) You MUST be running a 64-bit Operating System for this to work (sorry, but the Linux VM SMP client is 64-bit only).
1) TURN ON Virtualization (VT) in your computer's BIOS if it is not already on.
2) Download VMWare player (Google this, latest version is 2.5).
3) Install VMWare player, reboot required.
4) Download Notfred's Virtual Disk Image file from the above link and unzip to a separate folder.
5) Make 4 copies of the folder unziped in Step 4 (I called my VMfold-1, VMfold-2, etc.).
6) Rename the two files in each of the 4 folders from folding.xxx to VMfold-1.xxx. This is CRITICAL because you really don't want 4 VMPlayer sessions running with the same name.
7) Open VMfold-1.vmx with your favorite text editor and make the following 3 changes:
- change the line:
memsize = "640"
to
memsize = "1152" <------- 1.125GB RAM (the A2 core has a tendency to stall out at the end of WUs if you run less than this)
------------------------------------
- change the line
displayName = "Folding@Home"
to
displayName = "VMfold-1"
------------------------------------
- change the line:
ide0:0.fileName = "folding.vmdk"
to
ide0:0.fileName = "VMfold-1.vmdk"
------------------------------------
8) repeat step 7 for EACH of the 4 VM disk folders you created in Step 5, adjusting the names accordingly.

9) open VM Player and direct it to open VMfold-1, let the session boot on it's own (it will select the proper folding client after a pre-set timeout, generally the entire boot takes about 90 seconds or so).
10) on the VM Player screen take note of the IP address assigned to the VMWare session and open a web browser and type this IP address in the address bar. You should see a Folding@home web page with different data listed and options for configuration changes.
11) click on "Reconfigure this host and any USB drives".
12) change the USERNAME and TEAM NAME to match your user and team.
13) change the SMP PER INSTANCE to 2.
14) click on the RECONFIGURE button.
15) click on the "here" link to go back to the main page.
16) click on Reboot enabled: enabled link.
17) click on "here" to reboot the VM Player machine so that you start folding under your username and team.

18) repeat steps 9-17 for each VM Player.

A couple of pointers once you're done.

Make sure to set core affinities for each Virtual Machine
Make sure to set Priority to Low for each VM
(Task Manager>Processes then right mouse on the process)

FAHSpy works better for checking your progress as FAHMon gives you a *hung* error even when the cores are folding away fine.

For setting priority, open your folding.vmx (or whatever you changed the name to) with Notepad in Windows and add the following to the bottom.

Originally Posted by zlojack

This totally works!

All of you guys who are folding with i7s, use the following at the bottom:

priority.ungrabbed = "idle"
processor0.use = "FALSE"
processor1.use = "FALSE"
processor2.use = "FALSE"
processor3.use = "FALSE"
processor6.use = "FALSE"
processor7.use = "FALSE"

Then for each instance, just change the processor numbers! Great stuff, lemonline! Thanks for that!

I used Notepad from the Windows 7 Accessories menu for this.

I use PriFinitty to set the GPU clients to "Below Normal" priority and that helps keep the PPD up.

[SugarJ]

FYI, these VM's only work on 64bit versions of Windows. The VM is a 64bit Ubuntu derivation, and you can't run a 64bit VM inside a 32bit OS.

EDIT: RETRACTED. Apparently you can. Who knew?

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by SugarJ

FYI, these VM's only work on 64bit versions of Windows. The VM is a 64bit Ubuntu derivation, and you can't run a 64bit VM inside a 32bit OS.

Are you sure?

I have a foggy recollection of running a 64bit OS in a VM in a 32bit environment.. but I could be wrong.

Host OS shouldn't play any part in the virtual OS as all the virtual OS needs it the ability to run 64bit instructions.

[zlojack]

Can't you just download a different version of VMWare? Someone with more knowledge of the subject than me needs to chime in here.

[geokilla]

I believe all VMware need Virtualization support except for VMware Workstation.

And another guide. The Official SMP Installation Thread : Legit Folding. Just scroll down a bit to around the middle of the first post.

[zlojack]

Originally Posted by geokilla

I believe all VMware need Virtualization support except for VMware Workstation.

And another guide. The Official SMP Installation Thread : Legit Folding. Just scroll down a bit to around the middle of the first post.

But does that mean you have to have 64-bit Windows?

Thanks for posting another guide.

We should really get a bunch of different folding setup guides and have a sticky at the top of the forum to help people get set up.

[sswilson]

Unless things have changed it doesn't have to be a 64bit version of windows, but your CPU does have to have the virtualization feature.

Been a while since I bothered with the SMP client at all. I'm surprised that they haven't fixed the Windows SMP to run as well as the linux one by now.

[geokilla]

Originally Posted by sswilson

Unless things have changed it doesn't have to be a 64bit version of windows, but your CPU does have to have the virtualization feature.

Been a while since I bothered with the SMP client at all. I'm surprised that they haven't fixed the Windows SMP to run as well as the linux one by now.

They said porting it over from Linux to Windows is very difficult or something. So that's why there's no A2 core. I really want to run VMware, but my rig in sig doesn't support it, unless I use VMware workstation....

Does anyone know how to run VMware as a service? I wanna try it on my sister's AMD X2 rig.

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by geokilla

They said porting it over from Linux to Windows is very difficult or something. So that's why there's no A2 core. I really want to run VMware, but my rig in sig doesn't support it, unless I use VMware workstation....

Does anyone know how to run VMware as a service? I wanna try it on my sister's AMD X2 rig.

Um your rig is more than capable of running a virtual machine.

Heck VirtualBox is free but you'll have to spend the time in setting up a hard disk for it.

[chriskwarren]

Originally Posted by SugarJ

FYI, these VM's only work on 64bit versions of Windows. The VM is a 64bit Ubuntu derivation, and you can't run a 64bit VM inside a 32bit OS.

I'm folding using the Evga guide in the first post on good ol' Windows XP Pro, 32-bit. PPD went from 800 to 1100 on an Athlon 64 X2 6400+

[geokilla]

Originally Posted by enaberif

Um your rig is more than capable of running a virtual machine.

Heck VirtualBox is free but you'll have to spend the time in setting up a hard disk for it.

My CPU doesn't support VT, which is essential for VMware. Well it's essential for VMware Server anyways.

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by geokilla

My CPU doesn't support VT, which is essential for VMware. Well it's essential for VMware Server anyways.

Its not essential you can run it perfectly fine with out it.

It might run a bit slower but you can still run it.

[chriskwarren]

On my Q6600 folding using vmware (used the Evga guide), currently getting 1562 PPD (1920 points, project 2665), and on the other instance of vmware, getting 2464 PPD (also 1920 points, but different project, 2675). 900 PPD difference, but both are configured the same as far as I can tell. Is this due to the project? (using FahSpy).

[3.0charlie]

Running the evga on the i7, still too early for ppd. Though a 1920 took 10 minutes even. Did the Priority change for the CPU to low, should I change the Priority on the GPU clients too?

Quicky question too: why is the i7 running at 50% with 2 instances? I did choose 4 cores in the Configuration.

[zlojack]

3.0charlie for the i7 you need 4 VMs at 2 cores each.

Does anyone know a way to permanently assign a priority? Whenever my stupid GPU clients switch between the FahCore_11 and the FahCore_14, the priority goes back to low and my PPD dives to 3k per GPU from over 6k!

I've searched around on Google but I can't find anything...