Windows XP Clients > 1024MB RAM Extremely Slow

[GerrenMurphy]

All,

This has only started in the past 2 weeks (from what I can tell), but any of our XP VM's with > 1024MB RAM are painfully slow. If I increase it above that, slow. As soon as I decrease the amount to 1024MB, fast, very fast.

I'm not sure where to start, so if somone could point me in the right direction, I'd be happy to provide more information.

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Forums - How many VMs are you running on the host? How much memory dos the host have? What sort of processes are the hosts running?

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

[GerrenMurphy]

The ESX server this VM is located on has 16GB RAM, and dual quad core processors. It is running only 5 VM's, each with 1GB RAM and very little workload. I'm fairly sure it's not a lack of resources on the ESX host.

• The other part I forgot to mention, is that CPU usage stays at 100% while RAM > 1024MB on the VM. Nothing in task manager shows anything but normal usage, however the CPU is still stuck at 100%.

• Also, when I add another 1024MB, shutdown takes 2x as long, almost exactly. I'm guessing that would make sense, but didn't know if it would help diagnose any issues.

[Lightbulb]

Are Vmware tools installed?

Would it be possible to throw another VM on the system of a different OS? Say linux Virtual appliance http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/68454

This would be a quick way to see if this was a systemic ESX issue or an issue with your XP build.

[kjb007]

Restart the management agents/hostd first. Which process on the vm is pegging the CPU at 100%. In the host summary, what is the host memory utilization?

-KjB

[BUGCHK]

Can you check if there is a memory limit set somewhere?

[GerrenMurphy]

Lightbulb - We have Server 2003 and a few Ubuntu machines running in VMWare with no issues. I'm starting to wonder if it may be an issue with the image I built them all from.

I will build a new XP image from scratch in the next few days and see if that resolves the issue.

BUGCHK - There is no memory limit set that I know of. I did most of the configuration/building of the sytems, but I will double check.

[Lightbulb]

Yep I have had issues with VMs deployed from images before (In my case a bad choice in Nlite that came back to bite me). Try a vanila build and see if the issue persists.

[Alp1]

I would agree to check for Limits (whether you've found any (yet) or not).

You may also want to check validate the Memory Consumed, as opposed to using the typical Memory Usage or Memory Active graphs. I've found "Consumed" to be a more reliable graph since it is more comprehensive.

-Carlo

http://www.vkernel.com

[tbraechter]

Thank you for the mail. I am off till 18th of March. I will contact you as soon as I am back in the office.