Painfully Slow vmkfstools import from smbshare

[jwnchoate]

I have a 2gbsparse 60GB .vmdk stored on a smb share. It was originally copied from a ESX2 platform. Now after the VI3 upgrade I am copying this disk back into the SAN LUN formated at vmfs3. The command I use is:

vmkfstools -i /mnt/smbshare/folder/virtualdisk.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/LUN0/servername/virtualdisk.vmdk

It is working and copying over. It is taking the chopped up 2gbsaparse disk and copying it to the new vmfs3 lun. Its converting it back to the new format and is copying so far at 75%. But its been 24 hours to copy 45G of the 60G drive. 30 hours seems a long time to copy a 60GB disk. There are no routers, just some 1GB links through the switches. At 2GB an hour to copy thats going to take quite a bit of time to copy several other disks back. Any ideas why its so slow? It did not take that long to copy them before. In the past I copied 100GB disks in 5 hours at 20GB and hour.

[virtualdud3]

Have there been any changes to your SAN? Are there additional VMs accessing the same LUN?

The issue could be something as simple as disk performance on the SAN.

[jwnchoate]

the only change is we formatted the LUN. no vms are using at the moment. Other than one lightly used box, there are no high amounts of disk activity. It was originally exported with vmkfstools -e from an esx2 box. but I dont know if some conversion is being done.

Also, if I copy from vmfs3 to vmfs3 disks the copy is normal.

[dinny]

Hiya,

Are you running ESX 3.02?

If so do you have October's patches installed?

One of them fixes a problem with really slow performance to SMB shares

Dinny