Slow VM startup

[nimos001]

I am seeing issues with several Windows 2003 x64 R2 vm's running on one of our ESX hosts. These VM's when rebooted are taking around 20 minutes on average to boot into Windows. I haven't been able to track down why this is. I was thinking it may have something to do with a resent implementation of veeam, but I am not sure if the issue was present before or after that implementation. I have attached the vmware.log of one of the systems in question and am hoping some of you can help me point me in the right direction with this. Thank you.

[Jasemccarty]

Looks like there are some snapshots in the mix.

1st, are the snapshots needed? If not, try getting rid of them and see if the problem persists.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author: VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center (ISBN:1420070274) Auerbach

Co-Author: VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference (ISBN:0470520728) Sybex

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[nimos001]

Yes, I have seen this also and have sent to our person responsible for veeam to get some more details. I guess I am wondering though why is this not happening to all our machines on reboot? It only appears to be a handfull. One thing that these machines all have in common however is they have 4 CPU's and 8GB of RAM allocated to them. I have seen some KB's while searching the community but was under the impression those issues mentioned where just for people running a more recent update.

[Jasemccarty]

I do my best not to run any VM's with 4 vCPUs. That could be your culprit.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author: VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center (ISBN:1420070274) Auerbach

Co-Author: VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference (ISBN:0470520728) Sybex

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[nimos001]

What is your reason for not wanting to run 4 vCPU's? Thank you for your quick replies Jase.

[Jasemccarty]

I typically don't run many 4 vCPU VMs (have a couple), because it has traditionally been more problematic/timely to schedule 4 threads across available cores than 2 threads across available cores.

Things have gotten better with vSphere than they were in the past, but as a general rule I try to keep it to a max 2 vCPU, depending on the workload/politics.

Also when you have many 4 vCPU VM's things like slot size in a HA can be affected. Jon Owings has a good article about this:

Hope that helps,

Jase

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author: VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center (ISBN:1420070274) Auerbach

Co-Author: VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference (ISBN:0470520728) Sybex

_{Please consider awarding points if this post was helpful or correct}

[nimos001]

How exactly do I get to the HA Adv runtime info window shown in that link. I am curious to see this information for our HA clusters. Thank you.

[Jasemccarty]

On the left pane, select the cluster.

On the right pane, select the Summary tab.

Then you will see the VMware HA summary on the right side of the right pane.

Click "Advanced Runtime Info"

HTH

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author: VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center (ISBN:1420070274) Auerbach

Co-Author: VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference (ISBN:0470520728) Sybex

_{Please consider awarding points if this post was helpful or correct}

[nimos001]

That's odd because I do not see that option. The far right side just has sections for VMware HA, VMware DRS, and VMware DRS Resource Distribution. I was checking reservations and see no CPU reservations set on the cluster but there is a 4GB memory reservation set for 1 machine.

[Jasemccarty]

Hmm... You don't see this link...?

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author: VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center (ISBN:1420070274) Auerbach

Co-Author: VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference (ISBN:0470520728) Sybex

_{Please consider awarding points if this post was helpful or correct}

[nimos001]

No I sure don't. Maybe I have to be higher than update 1 or something.

[Jasemccarty]

Hmmm.... I'm running vCenter 4.0 Update 1, and a combination 4.0 U1, 4.0, and 3.5 U5.

The cluster that was captured from has 4.0 hosts.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author: VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center (ISBN:1420070274) Auerbach

Co-Author: VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference (ISBN:0470520728) Sybex

_{Please consider awarding points if this post was helpful or correct}

[nimos001]

Well, out 2 production clusters are running 3.5.0 Build : 82663 and out test cluster is running 3.5.0 Build: 110268. We should have a V4 coming up next month. I am just going to build up a new VM with 4vCPU and 8GB ram and test, if I can re-create the issue I will then remove 2 vCPU's and test results and post back...