RFXCOM & VMWare

[Digit]

I've been doing some testing this evening with accessing a RFXCOM Receiver from within a virtual server (Windows 2003 on a Windows 2003 host).
My conclusion so far: TCP/IP is ok, Serial i can't say anything about yet. Need more testing.
First i tried connecting with Bert's RFXCOM receiver without using the ComPort Redirector (CPR):



As you can see, i had no problems at all.
Next i downloaded & installed the CPR. Tests with the CPR gave me the results you can see below, so this looked ok too:



The "closed" is because i closed the connection myself before screendump. But it received things...

Next thing was trying to connect with RFReceiver the COM way. But RFReceiver had problems finding COM3:



Where the Device Manager shows this:



However, no worry yet, i remember seeing that behavior before on my own HA PC a couple of weeks ago, when using the CPR for talking to the serial module built into my Ethernet Interface.
Don't know anymore how i solved that, but eventually i got it working. So it's not over yet...well, tomorrow there's another day...

Robert.

[b_weijenberg]

Robert,

Did you restart RFreceiver after you created the COM port by CPR.
RFreceiver does a check for available COM port during initialization only.

Bert

[Digit]

Yes, i did. I even rebooted the whole guest OS.

But i managed to get a COM3 and receive some data this morning!



I've done several things to get it working; now i have to go back and redo some of those things to see which actions are necessary to get it working.

Bert, could someone else being connected to the IP address cause me not being able to open the COM port? In that case, it must have in use a lot while i was trying...

[Bwired]

Hi Robert,
Which version VMware are you using, how much memory is this version consuming. And did you consider an MS product for this?
Thanks.Pieter

[b_weijenberg]

Robert,

My Ethernet receiver is also used by another person that has also a connection via Internet. The one who has the connection established at first will be the owner. The other person is no longer able to connect. So please remove the configured COM port after testing hours. If you do not remove the COM port from the CPR your systems claims my receiver and other people can't connect anymore.
The window available for you is from 10 to 16Hr local time.

In the CPR check for each COM port:
Server Reconnect,
Timeout Reconnect at 2 seconds,
TCP KeepAlive at 60000ms interval 30000ms

Bert

[Digit]

No problems anymore!
Everything works ok now. Guess someone took over the connection right between me switching from CPR Manager to RFReceiver, which must have taken maybe 20 seconds or so. Then i tried connecting with RFReceiver for 20-25 minutes and then gave up...but today, no problems!

I've shut down the connection, so it should be available again.
Thanks for the opportunity to test this, Bert.

More details later,

Robert.

[Arjen]

I'm also running Homeseer in a virtual Windows XP instance on VMWare server. No problems at all.

CTX35 on COM1 of the host and RFXCom Ethernet on virtual COM10 and COM11.

[Digit]

Nice to hear live experience regarding the combination of RFXCOM and VMWare, cause i wouldn't call the roughly 20 minutes i have been connected without problems, a real test.[:)]
But with this i feel confident to not run into problems when (if) i'm actually going to use VMWare.
Ow, and for the record: i didn't have to change any of the default settings in the CPR to get it working.

Now, for those interested in some details regarding VMWare:

Configuration used is the following.
- Asus M2A-VM mobo, 2 GB RAM
- AMD 64 X2 3800+ CPU
- 160 GB Spinpoint HD
- Host OS: Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard, running VMWare Server 1.0.4.
- Guest OS: Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard, given 384 MB RAM, 1 CPU, clean installation, with nothing installed, configured or turned on.

This is what the host looks like when no guest OS active:



This is what the host looks like with 1 guest OS active:



This is what the guest looks like:



One thing i saw when working with RFReceiver, is that screen output takes a lot of CPU! Very much actually, 100% was easily accomplished, for example when receiving a few packets in a short time. Even moving a mouse is very CPU-intensive. With RFReceiver minimised to the taskbar, there was almost no CPU used (no difference noticable with RFReceiver _not_ running)

One last answer for Pieter: yes, i did have a look at Virtual Server 2005, but it just felt less 'mature' then VMWare, so it didn't make it to the shortlist.

Robert.

[TANE]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Arjen</i>
<br />
I'm also running Homeseer in a virtual Windows XP instance on VMWare server. No problems at all.

CTX35 on COM1 of the host and RFXCom Ethernet on virtual COM10 and COM11.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Good to hear that.
I did use Hal2000 for about 4 years in VMware.
Will convert my Homeseer to VMware soon.

[Digit]

Hi Chak,

Care to share some of your VMWare experiences? I mean, after 4 years i think you must have some things to tell that could be interesting to those just starting with it?

Robert.

[TANE]

I have no experience with rfxcom and vmware.
I'm using Vmware since end 90's. I was one of the first persons in NL who started using VMware in production
Started with
- Workstation
- GSX (now Vmware Server)
- ESX
At home I use Vmware Fusion for the Mac with 3D and DirectX 9.0

Things that you have to consider before using vmware
Disk access will be always slow +/- 30%
Video +/- 50% slow
Network +/- 30%
Com port mostly no problem on the workstation versions.
USB will work fine with latest versions +/- 30% slow.

<u>Installation</u>
Always start from an fresh installation.
remove not used drivers
give lot of memory
do not use more than 1 CPU virtual.
Fixed disk size. (not the growing one)
disconect CDrom and floppy
Check the performance tips from Vmware