VMWare Tools

VMWare tools is something every machine that runs on ESXi should have installed. It contains drivers for the Virtual Disk, Memory Management, Video Driver, Sound Driver, Network Driver and so on. I noticed this first hang when VMWare Tools was no installed on our exchange server. Our Exchange server was pigging out real badly but when you were to review the performance counter nothing would suggest it is slowing down. The slowdown was caused by how VMWare handles memory and how it shares that with other machines on the host. It was taking away all of exchanges memory in favor for other VM's because VMWare Tools wasn't installed. I installed it a couple days ago and it has been fast as ever now. It boots and shuts down fast as well as navigating through the Exchange Console is not a nightmare anymore. In a month or so we should be upgrading to 32GB of ram for both our VMWare server so exchange can have its recommended size for ever better speed!