Windows 2008 R2 64bit Randomly Hangs / Freezes on vSphere

[A13x]

I was wondering if anyone has started creating Windows 2008 R2 VMs and noticed that they are randomly hanging/ freezing at times. I have VMs of both standard and enterprise R2 editions and they just do just that. I have tried a variety of virtual hardware/ device combinations and this does not seem to have made a difference. I also tried assigning them resource pools but i believe this issue is closely related to the windows 2008 64bit non R2 issues reported on this forum. The dynamic cache service is not avaliable for the R2 version so i am a little stummed over what to do. Its not like it has a shortage of resources a VM with 4GB of ram on a 16GB system and plenty of CPU.

I manually assigned the page file thinking that it was just eating masses amount of disk space and this also failed.

[LucasAlbers]

The memory model was rewritten for w2008r2. It no longer needs a dynamic cache service, and you should not install it on a w2008r2 host.

The vmware tools video driver is causing the crash. If you only access via rdp you will not have this crash.

Or you can uninstall the vmware video driver and the crashes will also disappear.

I run server instances with 768 ram at times and it works fine for certain work loads.

[A13x]

hmm interesting as i never noticed it crash in rdp once, i will give it a few more days of testing before approving the work around. How did you narrow it down to the video driver? i noticed from looking at machine stats that it was still running fine etc just no movement of mouse etc

thanks for your help

[LucasAlbers]

I never ever saw it crash when accessing via rdp.

We have heavy loads on 2008r2 sql server and a small number of win7 clients running day in and day out without problems.

[RichardWest]

I am also experiencing the same issues as the original poster.

I'll give RDP a try to see if the resolves the issues.

Hopefully VMware is aware of this problem and be publishing a new video driver in the next update to VMtools.

[crcross]

I just wanted to chime in and say I'm also experiencing the same problem as the OP. Unfortunately RDP is not a solution for me as this is a test environment that is isolated from my workstation's network.

Hopefully VMWare is looking into this...

[LucasAlbers]

Vmware will fix with update 1.

One poster said vmware had fixed this, but that does not appear to be the case as of the 193498 release.

[thepeoplesvalle]

We have the same issue and no vmtools installed.

[A13x]

I cannot work it out what causes it as it just randomly stops, i have too tried no vmware tools, different drivers for gfx. RDP is normally the way i log into these VMs and only use console as a ilo solution when network is down. I hope update 1 does fix this, has it been confirmed yet by VMware that there is an issue?

[RichardWest]

Yes it has been a confirmed issue with the vmware supplied video driver. If you uninstall the video driver then the system operates fine.

If you are having issues without the vmware video driver installed then you have a different issue and I would encourage you to open a support ticket with vmware.

[n8felton]

Does anyone know when VMWware may be releasing an updated version of ESXi 4 and/or VMWare Tools to support Windows Server 2008 R2?

[BrendanFitz]

Hi, Has this issue been answered? I have the same issue, I hav multiple VM's running Windows 2008 64-Bit R2 and Windows 32-Bit. The Windows 32-Bit VM's are all ok, the 64-Bit OS's shut down randomly. I have instances with VMTools installed and instances with VMTools not installed, different configurations for all, still same issue. I'm running ESXi 4.0, should I change to ESX 4 Server? Is there a fix for this from VMWare? When I run cpuid on the boxes it tells me 64-Bitis supported, but not 64-Bit VMware,though virtualisation is support and switched on in the BIOS.

Hyperthreading : Yes

Supports 64-bit Longmode : Yes

Supports 64-bit VMware : No

I've a HP ProLiant BL460c Blade.