Experiencing very slow execution and program installation time

[david_t81]

Hi, i am a ESXi newbie here and need some advice for an issue which i have been facing for a week now. Appreciate any advice that can point me in the right direction.

Background

I was assigned to setup a server at work to host an internal source code repository and possibly run some VM as dev server in thefuture.

Server specs:

HP Proliant DL360 Gen9

Xeon  E5-2630 CPU

144GB RAM

6x HP 15K SAS drive + 2 hot backup (RAID 1+0)
HPE-ESXi-6.5.0-iso-650.10.1.5.20 (Nov 2017)

Issue

I started a VM based on the official CoreOS-VMware image and wrote a docker-compose file to pull down the official Gitlab docker image into the VM. My VM is configured with 2 vCPUs, 4GB RAM and 30GB virtual disk on localstorage.

I first noticed sluggish performance when the downloaded Docker image took a while to extract.

Thereafter, running the command "docker-compose --version" takes 15secs to show up the version info in the terminal. (On my ubuntu desktop, it took 1 sec)

The entire installation of Gitlab took about 1.5 hours to complete. (On my ubuntu desktop, it took < 10mins)

I suspected that there is a problem with my storage setup so i ceated a 2GB file and copy it from my desktop into the VM. I have attached the performance chart below for CPU Disk and Datastore. Red box is when the transfer was active.

I like to get some opinion if my suspicion is correct? Anyone has an opinion as to where i can tweak or investigate?

Thanks in advance.

[diegodco31]

What version of vsphere is installed on the server?

[david_t81]

I installed HPE-ESXi-6.5.0-iso-650.10.1.5.20 (Hewlett Packard Enterprise)

Got it from here: Download VMware vSphere

[diegodco31]

Are there other vms on this server?

Vmtools installed?

[david_t81]

Yes VMware tools is installed. There is another active VM but it rather dormant..  not seeing much activity on it because there arent any user accessing it.

[IRIX201110141]

Next time use esxtop -> s2 -> V from the command line.

Is it right that you get 1400ms latency for the disks?!

- Which Smart Array RAID Controller is in the box?

- Does the Controller have Cache and a Battery?

- Is write caching enabled for the vDisk

Regards,

Joerg

[david_t81]

- Which Smart Array RAID Controller is in the box?

HP Smart Array P440ar Controller

- Does the Controller have Cache and a Battery?

Cache yes but battery is degraded. I have pulled it out of the system and waiting for replacement battery to arrive.

- Is write caching enabled for the vDisk

Disabled automatically after the battery is pulled out

I got some new charts on the latency numbers. These numbers are for an extraction of a Docker image. I believe this is an IO intensive operation. The latency numbers looks high. Right?