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SurferL
Contributor
Contributor

VMware ESXI 6.5, Windows 10 disk usage issue

Hi,

I am trying to get Windows 10 Pro N working on our VMware instance however am having a few issues with disk usage throttling at "100%" (~2.5MB/s - ~5MB/s) with barely anything running.

The "top" usage of disk usage according to Task Manager is usually "System" and when opening file location, it points to ntoskrnl.exe.

Things I've tried:

Details of our VMware instance:

  • Hypervisor: VMware ESXI 6.5 5310538
  • Model: PowerEdge R730
  • Proc Type: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2667 v4 @ 3.20GHz

I'm not really sure how else to proceed to fix this issue. Would upgrading to ESXI 6.7 help?

NB, I do not have any issues with using Windows 7, only Windows 10 it seems.

Thanks

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16 Replies
sjesse
Leadership
Leadership

Turn off windows defender if its on. Also even if your not using horizon this page may help make it work better

Creating an Optimized Windows Image for a VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop | VMware

They go through optimzation steps that may help.

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sjesse
Leadership
Leadership

Sorry missed you did turn of windows defender.

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kenbshinn
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Are you only seeing latency in the Guest Operating system? Do you see anything in the way of disk latency from ESXi/vCenter?

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SurferL
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks - the VMware OS optimisation tool has helped improved performance slightly, but the OS still acts a bit sluggish in comparison to Windows 7

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SurferL
Contributor
Contributor

Yeah, only looking in the Guest (Win10) OS so far.

How would I go about looking at disk latency on the host? would I need to go to the correct ESXI host and check out disk usage there? Would I be able to look at disk usage for a specific VM being used there?

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larstr
Champion
Champion

SurferL,

What version of Windows 10 are you using? Make sure that the VMware OS Optimization Tool is of a more recent date than the Windows version you're using.

Lars

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SurferL
Contributor
Contributor

Am running Windows 10 Pro N, version 1809, OS build 17763.253.

Will have a look and see if there is a more recent OS optimisation version I can use!

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kenbshinn
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

From vCenter, select the VM, and look for the Monitor Tab, click the Performance Button click Advanced and scroll down and hit the Drop down for Datastore and Disk.

You should also look at the event log, under Tasks & Events under Events and see if there are any latency messages in there.

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larstr
Champion
Champion

SurferL,

IMHO I think 1809 is still a bit too new and it would be easier for you to use 1803 or similar for now.

Lars

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SurferL
Contributor
Contributor

Hmm okay - I'll get an image with 1803, but I was having this issue when I was using 1803 previously (just didn't run the optimisation tool).

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Wolken
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

What are the settings of that VM? How many CPU, RAM assigned? What is their usage inside VM?

Recently I fixed "performance issues" on VM by just assigning more RAM to it.

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SurferL
Contributor
Contributor

2 CPUs, 4GB RAM. Average usage when running jobs is about 25-50% CPU usage, and 2GB RAM.

This is also standard for our Windows 7 machines, which doesn't have any issues.

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Wolken
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks!

Do you have any antivirus installed inside? Link: Disk utilization 100% for very long time - ntoskrnl.exe

Check the solutions here as well: Windows 8 keeps slows down to 100% disk usage and hangs. - Microsoft Community

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Wolken
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

By the way, what type of disk did you assign to the VM? Is it possible to convert it to the thick-provision eager-zeroed disk?

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SurferL
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks - i'll have a look through those links and see if changing any of those suggested settings works.

Currently the disk is thin-provisioned (mainly to save space). Would changing it to thick-provision eager-zeroed help? I can do a test and clone the machine to thick-provisioned I believe.

I'm curious if it's worth upgrading to ESXI 6.7 as I vaguely remember reading somewhere that there were some bug fixes related to Windows 10 and Windows Server...

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larstr
Champion
Champion

For example with 1803 there was a problem after login that onedrive setup would run for a while and it was fixed in an updated version of the Optimization Tool.

Lars

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