Copy MS Exchange Data from an NTFS data store Volume to VMFS Data Store Volume?

[dbullion]

I need to copy aboput 25G of data from an NTFS Volume to a VMFS volume.

I have built a VM (Windows Server 2003 Enterprise pully patched) on an ESX server (3.5) The ESX server is part of a data center but this is the only VM on this ESX Server.

The physical hardware is Dell 2950 with Dual Quad Core Intel Procs. and 16G Ram

Storage is Lefthand iSCSI SAN connected via multiple Cisco Switches. SAN Traffic is on a seperate VLAN.

The VM has two VMFS Volumes on SAN. The OS drive (HDD C:) and the Data drive (HDD E:).

I used the Microsoft iSCSI initiator (v2.6) in the VM OS to connect to a NTFS Volume (HDD H:) that has the data I need. I have no problems until I try to copy the data through Windows from the NTFS Volume (HDD H:) to the VMFS Volume (HDD E:).

When I start to copy the data the Processor Utilization jumps to 100% inside the Windows VM and the copy is taking days to complete. Network Utilization is very low.

I tried adjusting proc settings in ESX and adding another processor through ESX. No matter what I do the Windows VM goes to 100% proc utilization.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Anders_Gregerse]

I assume that you are using gbit nics and have verified that it's running the correct speed and duplex? Are any Windows servers accessing the volume at the same time? I've experienced something similiar where it came to the conclusion that we had a bad nic (rare, but possible)

[dbullion]

Thanks for your quick response.

They are Gig Nics and in all other cases they work great.

[Anders_Gregerse]

So you are using a software initiator, using jumbo frames? It would explain the cpu and slow performance if it was jumbo frames being retransmitted as standard frames. Have you tried accessing the volume from another vm? Any clues from esxtop?

[dbullion]

The ESXTOP output is attached. The percentages look strange to me. I have not used ESXTOP before so this may be normal output. Any input is greatly appreciated.

Is there anything I can do about the frame size on existing partitions that I do not want to lose the data on?

Thanks again.