VMware Communities: Message List - Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Poort443 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:01:11 GMT

Check the following thread: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/140931?start=45&tstart=0

Here robertl30 states:

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

"Good news. VMware came back with some good info on how to better work around the issue where we see large VMs (over 4GB RAM) that have very long restart times. At first they had us turn off Page Sharing at the ESX host. But it turns out we can disable this feature on a per-VM basis.

I added the Advanced VM setting "sched.mem.pshare.enable" option to False (Edit Settings, Options, Advanced, General, Configuration Parameters, Add Row). I then moved the VMs to production hosts that did not have the Page Sharing feature disabled. I restarted each server twice and the performance was normal.

VMware also provided guidance on how to determine the effectiveness of Page Sharing in general. The tool to use is in the ESX CLI and is called "esxtop". Press M to bring up the memory page and observe data on the PSHARE row.

VMware also is stating that they are still looking at engineering a fix for ESX 3.5, but that the problem is already fully resolved in vSphere 4."

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

I tried these steps and they solved the problems I had with x64 on "certain" hardware.

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

dsulli — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:08:48 GMT

I had the same issue and it turned out to be that the guest was assigned more memory then the memory resource limit was allowing it to have. Once I set the memory resource limit to Unlimited, the guest booted fine.

Edit Settings > Resources > Memory

Hope that helps you too..

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

tallsky — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:50:57 GMT

I certainly don't "want" to.

Re-Read the KB article.

The boot delay is only the most immediately noticable symptom.

We've also experienced slow performance of the running system. The KB article is 100% right on. There's a serious problem here.

(It is pre-production. But intended for production, yes).

It would be nice if you could disable page sharing for individual VMs and retain it for others.

Even better, fix the Copy on Write issue newer processors have introduced to the ESX code.

Better still, both!

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Sanjana — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:25:54 GMT

tallsky,

Sucks to have to turn it off.

There are two workarounds to the issue. The first one requires you to just power cycle the VM (powerOff --> powerOn). I'm just curious as to why do you want to disable page sharing instead. (production VM, perhaps?)

Thanks,

--sanjana

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

aleph0 — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:57:06 GMT

What you are doing configurig 4 vCPU is really wrong. It's more difficult to find 4 cores free at the same time than find 1 core free. so your scheduler work very bad. Probably you'll have high %RDY time and VMs that performs worst that they can do if they have 1 vCPU...

\aleph0
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Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

jasoncllsystems — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:36:55 GMT

I'm just wonder why not 4vCPU?

Personally I never never configure 1vCPU for my PRODUCTION VMs and normally 4vCPU.

Regards,

CLL SYSTEMS http://www.cllsystems.com

MALAYSIA VMWARE COMMUNITIES
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Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

tallsky — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:11:44 GMT

That was it exactly Zahni, thanks.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=1004901&sliceId=1

"using certain hardware", yea sure, pass it off. Like any recent Xeon proc?

I'm using Xeon 5410, by the way.

I hope they fix this in 4.x, memory sharing is a cool feature. Most these VMs run at less than %10 memory. Conservative oversubscribing is very valuable.

Sucks to have to turn it off.

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Zahni — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:32:18 GMT

Try to set Mem.ShareScanGHz = 0 in Advanced Config and reboot.

There are know issues with 64-Bit Windows-VM's in ESX...

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

rlund — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:45:07 GMT

Well, mine maybe takes 30 sec's or so, but I would not call that a problem.

5-10 min, is another story.

Roger Lund

My Blog:

http://rogerlunditblog.blogspot.com/

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Marco Germann — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:33:22 GMT

Hello,

my VM config:

Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64 R1 SP1
2vCPU (plain Windows install with 2vCPU ALU)
8GByte RAM
System drive C:\ as vmdk on VMFS v3 - SAN Storage (HP EVA 4400, 4GBit/s FC 4path)
DATA drive D:\ RAW LUN mapping - SAN Storage (HP EVA 4400, 4GBit/s FC 4path)

ESX config (4Node Cluster):

Dual Quad Intel Xeon 2GHz
24GByte RAM (32GByte planned)
4x 4GBit/s FC controller (SAN)
10x 1GBit/s Ethernet controller (LAN)

A Windows Server 2008 x64 VM with less than 4GByte RAM boots up in 10 seconds, more than 4GByte RAM takes about 1 Minute to come up.

ESX-Host that host the Exchange 2007 VM has, when Exchange VM is running, 20% CPU and 70% RAM usage.

Best regards

Marco Germann

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

rlund — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:04:26 GMT

I am running Exchange 2007 on Server 2008, with 2 vCPU's and 6 GB's of memory without a hitch.

Reboots are fast, are we talking about local disk or san?

What version of server 2008?

Roger Lund

My Blog:

http://rogerlunditblog.blogspot.com/

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

tom howarth — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:28:13 GMT

There is a known issue with Exchange 2007 and IP6 the Edge Transport service to be exact.

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert
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Contributing author for the upcoming book "VMware Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment”.

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

tallsky — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:47:54 GMT

It's not just 2008, I have the same problem with 2003.
The issue has something to do with using multiple vCPUs and more than 4 GB of memory, and I'm sure has something to do with the co-scheduling SMP discussed here:

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-4960
But not sure why the problem only kicks in when we're over 4 GB. Probably related to ESX still being 32bit. Betcha!

Apparently, there's a "solution" here:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/VMWare/Q_24028438.html

But I sort of doubt it. I don't think it can be fixed short of ESX 4.

(EDIT: Side Note* When you find an Experts-Exchange "Solution" in a google search, follow google's cached link, scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll see all the hidden answers. As I suspected, there was nothing useful.)

1 vCPU works great with 32 GB of memory. Make that 2 vCPU and it takes FOREVER to boot.
VM seems OK after booting, but booting takes so damn long.
It's a bit scary with big important services like SQL and Exchange. If you need to restart it, hope you're not in a hurry lol.
I hope they fix this soon. It's anoyning as hell.

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

aleph0 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:52:35 GMT

hi all,

any news on the subject?

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

RParker — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:08:15 GMT

Just to clarify, it is actually only my x64 Windows that takes forever to boot.

Just as a test, did you try 2 vCPU, lowering the Memory to under 4GB, and check the boot time as well? It may be something with the way your ESX is configured, that may be the best performance you get. Also what are you doing inside the VM that you need that much RAM? Maybe you really don't need that much RAM.

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

aleph0 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:54:57 GMT

Yep!

try this:

now that you have 4 vCPU run esxtop on the host that's running that VM: take note of the %RDY counter value: le lower is the better

then decrease the vCPU to 2:

take notes of the %RDY time and see if it's lower.

remember: the lower the %RDY time the better performance you have.

Keep me informed

Thank you

cheers

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Marco Germann — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:47:35 GMT

Hello aleph0,

My Exchange Server 2003 which I will migrate is also a VM with 4vCPU's and the performance is great.
Should I change it to 2vCPUs and try?

best regards
Marco

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

aleph0 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:24:01 GMT

hello all,

why do you use 4 vCPU? can you explain me this choice?

Thank you

\aleph0
____________________________
http://virtualaleph.blogspot.com/
http://vmusergroupitalia.blogspot.com/ (in italian)
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Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Marco Germann — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:51:36 GMT

Same problem at my site:

Guest with Windows Server 2008 x64 Enterprise, 4vCPU, 8GByte RAM for Exchange Server 2007 is booting very long and the handling with the machine is very slowly.
Another Guest with Windows Server 2008 x64 Enterprise, 4vCPU but only 4GByte RAM boots up more quickly.
What can I do? I'm on the way to migrate my Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007 and 8GByte RAM is necessary.

Best regards
Marco

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Dr No — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:34:30 GMT

Just to clarify, it is actually only my x64 Windows that takes forever to boot.

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Dr No — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:38:33 GMT

I removed IPv6 and still takes about 5-10 minutes just to boot.

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Texiwill — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:44:02 GMT

Hello,

Moved to the VI: Virtual Machine and Guest OS

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354
As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Bastien_P — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:45:40 GMT

Hi,

we had some similar issue with 2008 server. (32 or 64 bit in our case). In our case the ipv6 was the problem. We removed this option (that we wont use anyway) and after that it went clean. With a bit of chance it might help you..

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Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Dr No — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:26:15 GMT

Yes

I am running x64 Windows Server 2008 with v4 CPUs and 16GB RAM

The 32-Bit version seems to boot faster.

Re: Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

RParker — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:22:29 GMT

2 vCPU with more than 4GB of RAM?

Windows Server 2008 Slugish and slow to boot

Dr No — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:03:15 GMT

I am running ESX 3.5 Update2. My Windows Server 2003 run great.

However, Windows Server 2008 takes a while when being restated.

This happens anyone?