Windows Server 2016 VM's Running on vSphere

[LeeRoyy]

Hi, I am hoping someone can help me with a few niggles I am having with a ESXi server running 4 VM's all running Windows Server 2016

Basically they all appear to be running sluggish > Take for ever to do very basic stuff.

SQL server takes upto 5 hours to install Windows updates and upon reboot not all services will start such as SQL and these are set to Automatically start!a

We have a full system back up and restored this VM to a Machine and its runs fine but the idea is to reduce the amount of hardware hence the ESXi server.

Same goes for the DC server, Browsing active directory takes an age just to perform a user search, Hangs for ages. Confusing part is RAM & CPU usage on the VM's its self show very minimal where as in ESXi show quite high usage.

I hope some one can shed some light?

LeeRoyy.

[StephenMoll]

Not much information to work with there.

I would look for resource contention first. I.e. How much RAM has the host, compared to the amount of vRAM configured for the VMs? and What CPU specs does the host have, and how many vCPUs does each VM have?

[LeeRoyy]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the response, Please see the below specs of the host:

CPU: Xeon E5-2620 2.5Ghz (8 Core / 16 Threads)
RAM: 32 GB DDR3
HDD 2x 4TB 7.2K Disk's

Vm's

AD - 2GB RAM - 2 vCPU
SQL - 8GB RAM 4 vCPU
FS -  8GB RAM 4 vCPU

Veeam - 4GB RAM 4 vCPU (Only active out of hours)

Host - 22GB/32GB RAM allocated

[sk84]

If everything inside the virtual machine is sluggish, it is usually the storage layer. And 2x 4 TB 7.2k SATA hard disks are not really fast. Are these two disks running in RAID 1?

But if I imagine a SQL, file and AD server running on these two disks, and there might be multiple simultaneous user interactions, then it's clear that all VMs will be very slow.

What do the storage performance values look like with esxtop? Especially interesting are CMD/s, KAVG/s and DAVG/s.

See here:
VMware Knowledge Base

Interpreting esxtop Statistics

[StephenMoll]

Another one worth looking at:

Understanding % RDY / %CSTP scale

[LeeRoyy]

Thanks for the responses I have attached a snippet from Disk usage and system usage, Do these look normal?

[daphnissov]

What exact version of ESXi are you running here?

[LeeRoyy]

HPE Customized Image ESXi 6.5.0 version 650.10.1.5

[daphnissov]

What's the build number, please?

[LeeRoyy]

ESXi 6.5.0 Vmkernel Release Build 5310538
Thanks

[daphnissov]

Ok, so that's a pre-Update 1 build of 6.5 which is pretty early. So what I'd recommend before spending oodles more time deep diving into possible causes is to update to the latest build because it's possible that'll resolve the issue itself. Be aware, however, than your ancient C# client will not connect to ESXi as of Update 1 so you'll be forced to use the HTML5 embedded host client.

[LeeRoyy]

Thank you,

is it just a case of getting the URL to the VIB file and upgrading? Also, would I need to look for an HP Customized version?

Thanks

[vijayrana968]

Additionally, capture the CPU and disk metrics via ESXTOP.

[Dave_the_Wave]

ProLiant's missing or have failed BBWC batteries for their Smart controller results in extremely poor performance to the point where it is almost unusable.

I discussed a bit about it here:

Re: VM disk Read/Write latency is more then 300ms

Also make sure your Windows VMs are all on VMTools 10.3.2, earlier versions had severe issues for 2012R2 and up.

[StephenMoll]

That's a good shout. It's a long time since I used a Proliant DL series server, but do now remember their performance was horrible if write-caching was disabled in the BIOS. This can happen for several reasons:

• It wasn't set in the first place.
• The battery is still charging because the system is new.
• The battery is charging after a recent power outage.
• The battery has expired or is damaged (they don't last for ever).
• The system has been shutdown recently for an extended period, and the storage controller wasn't shutdown properly, battery is now flat or dead.

[LeeRoyy]

Thanks for the suggestions;

I have checked the disk latency and have attached the current graph: I will need to schedule a time to power down and check the BIOS to check if Write Cache is disabled.

Lee