Event ID 51 during paging operation

[Malawa]

HI,

On a converted VM I get an event id 51 error from time to time. This windows 2000 server was in raid 1 software before the conversion. It's a heavy loaded server with many I/O. We receive and send about 2000 small files / hours with this server.

I have about 30 other VM and it's the only one with this error. Then again, it's the only one that deal with ton off smalls files.

I found a tip about a reg hack about changing a timeout from 30 to 60 but I already have the timeout set at 60 (sorry, I can't find where I saw that but it's in the VMware forums ..)

Any Idea what I can do to solve this problem ?

Thanks

[gorto]

1. give the VM more real memory to help reduce excessive paging

2. set the Paging File to be fixed in size rather than dynamic

3. defrag the (virtual) hard disk that the paging files resides on

4. ensure the vmfs volume does not have excessive Meta updates

[Malawa]

I have already done #1 and #2, I have to wait for a reboot tonight

I will do #3 but I don't understand #4. How can I find excessive Meta Updates ?

ML

[kjb007]

What kind of storage are you using? If you have many vm's, and a large LUN where you store your vm files, then you may be flooding your controller as well. How much storage do you have for esx, and how many vm's are on it? The disk timeout to 60 seconds is good, and it will keep your vm from freezing or going down, but it does not fix the issue, it only allows you to work through it. Find the bottleneck here, which may be LUN size, or controller, or number of spindles over which your datastore is living.

-KjB

[Malawa]

We have a EVA4100 with plenty of space and none of the other VM on that controler and LUN have this problem (exept an other Win2K server)

I have this error ramdomly about 2-3 times per day.

One other thing that I have just find out ... the SCSI controler for that VM is a Buslogic and many other VM have a LSI logic. It's a Windows 2000 adv and my only other VM with 2000 have also a BUSlogic controler and it's the other one with this problem.

Maybe there an advenced setting somewhere for BusLogic

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Moved to the VI: Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[kjb007]

BusLogic is default for win2k. The lsi driver is not included in win2k. You'll have to get the driver yourself and make sure it's loaded before you can switch it in your vm settings, else your vm will probably not boot, and may start blue screening.

I'm not sure if the driver itself would cause issues, but lsi is the more efficient driver. It may be that the buslogic driver is not able to keep up with the I/O. Have you looked in your disk I/O to see if disk usage is an issue?

-KjB