How long does it take you to create a VM?

[peetz]

Hi there,

we have re-installed the VC-server in our VMware test environment from scratch (with VC 2.5 U4). It is a VM with 2 CPUs and 4 GB RAM now and also runs the VC-database on SQL Server 2005.

Unfortunately, after doing this we still see the same VC problems like in our current production environment (VC is a physical server here with 2.5 U3 using a remote Oracle10 database):

VM operations like "create a new VM", "re-configure a VM", "power-on a VM" take a very long time. A "Create Virtual Machine"-task e.g. takes more than two minutes to complete. In the test environment we do this on a DRS/HA-enabled cluster of three ESX 3.5U3 hosts, but even disabling DRS does not change this behaviour. So I guess there is a problem in the VC-to-host communication.

Do you see similar behaviour with comparable configurations? How long does it take you to create a VM?

Thanks for any comments

Andreas

[Cooldude09]

Andreas, the time taken to create a VM depends on the steps involved and time you take to fill in the options...On an avg when you fill the details and click on finish on the last setp is should not take more than 30 secs...15 secs on an avg.....similarly powering on a vm etc takes almost 30 sec to 60 sec dependning on the hardware....is it giving any errors...?

Regards

Anil

Save the planet, Go Green

if you found my answer to be useful, feel free to mark it as Helpful or Correct.

[peetz]

Thank you for your comment. I'm counting the time from completing the "New VM"-wizard (clicking its last OK-button) until the task completion time shown in the "Recent tasks" pane.

There are no error messages. The events shown inVC and the logs on the EsX host where the VM is created look all normal.

BTW: If I connect to an ESX host directly with the VI client and create a VM this way, the task instantly completes. So it must be a VC problem.

Do you use custom certicates in your environment?

Andreas

[Cooldude09]

Andreas if that is the scene, definitely the problem lies at the VC. Can you check the database errors and see if any errors are generated. This normally happens wen the VC takes time to talk to the database. In my environment i am not using any custom certificates....

Regards

Anil

Save the planet, Go Green

if you found my answer to be useful, feel free to mark it as Helpful or Correct.

[peetz]

Okay, the issue is resolved.

I recently added an NFS datastore to the hosts that showed the problem, and it turned out that this reproducably correlated to the slowness I saw in VirtualCenter.

After a 90 minute webex session with VMware support they noticed that there was no reverse DNS lookup entry for the NFS server that we used. And yes, this was the root cause of the problem. After adding this entry things were normally fast again.

Bottom line: If you use an NFS datastore with your ESX hosts make sure that both DNS and reverse DNS are properly set up for the NFS server's hostname/IP address.

Andreas

P.S.: Why can't I reward myself points for this?