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bethepassword
Contributor
Contributor

Virtual Machine becomes unresponsive

Strange problem.

I have P2V my exchange 2003 server (running on Windows 2000) on to a big dl585 quad dual processor, 32mb of ram. What happens is the server will be running fine then within a half hour time frame, I can see that the memory starts dropping until the VM is using hardly any memory and the VM becomes unresponsive and I have to reboot it. The CPU is still working at the same level as before (around 70%). Nothing is logged..its just like the VM starts dying a slow death. This VM is the only one on the server, so there is no contention for resources.

Could it be that it was a P2V?

Help!

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Gerrit_Lehr
Commander
Commander

How did you P2V the VM? VMWare Converter? Did you change the number of CPUs while converting from physical to virtual? Did you install the latest VMWare tools inside the VM?

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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bethepassword
Contributor
Contributor

I used the vmware converter. I kept the same number of CPU's that the physical server had (4). I had installed the latest vmtools after it was P2V'ed

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Gerrit_Lehr
Commander
Commander

Can you see which process causes the Memory to fill up? (Taskmanager)

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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bethepassword
Contributor
Contributor

The memory isn't filling up. The active memory goes lower and lower until the server is using hardly any active memory, when it should be using more memory. The server supports over 250 people.

Concerning the vmtools...I just checked and my version is a build (3.5.0.82663) off what my ESX server is running (3.5.0.84374) Should they match?

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Gerrit_Lehr
Commander
Commander

They usually should - try to upgrade them again, even though I don't think thats the root of this issue...

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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bethepassword
Contributor
Contributor

Reinstalled vmtools and it hads the old build number

I did increase the pagefile size to the recommended level and it seems to be running a little better. The server before was under powered. If I can go a couple of days without rebooting I'll be happy, but still don't understand why the memory starts decreasing until it is unresponsive.

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Nautilus
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

remove all the Hardware components that is not needed after P2V

reduce the CPUs to 2 (or 1, in this case the HAL is not matching to a single CPU) but you can test this. I dondt know why but i see this Problem more than one time, that a VM running better when you use less CPUs. Sometime is less more.

Kind regards

Nautilus

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bethepassword
Contributor
Contributor

I have removed a bunch of hidden devices from the vm, but will have to wait to reduce the number of processors...perhaps the next time it dies. During the evening it ran fine for 6 hours without any problems...so far so good. I've contacted support...we'll see what they have to say.

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bethepassword
Contributor
Contributor

Here is the update. VMware support said that they have never seen this problem before...lucky me. I tried the vm with 1 cpu, 4 cup, more ram, less ram but eventally the vm would take an hour to start. It looked like the ESX server would stop giving the vm resources...the vm would be running at 100% on the taskmanager within the vm but you would see the memory and cpu counters for the vm within the Virtualcenter, start dropping off until the vm was unresponsive. In the end we went back to the physical server and will do a migration instead of the P2V route.

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