Slow (gui) performance Windows 2008 64-bit.

[frankdenneman]

I'm currently creating windows 2008 64-bit templates and in the middle of configuring the windows 2008 64-bit standard virtual machine, the performance of the VM went down the drain.

The look and feel of the virtual machine is equal to a machine where the hardware acceleration is turned down. But VMtools are installed on a "virgin" windows VM, no old dll's are active.The VM is running on a ESX 3.5 update 4 system without any other machines active. ESX is running on a blade 460 G5 (dual quad core, 32MB ram)

I've experienced the same problem with existing w2k8 64 bit templates which was copied from a 3.5 update 2 environment. The sluggishness started as soon as I logged into windows, so I figured it was a problem in the templates. But after creating the second template, the problem occured on the fresh (standard) VM as well.

I've used several ISO's and the problem keep on existing. I've vmotioned the VM to different ESX machines, but the problem seems to exist in the VM.

When monitoring the VM, ESXTOP shows nothing out of the ordinary and Resource monitor in windows shows a near-idle guest-os. No disk activity, and little cpu and memory utilization.

No virusscanner is currently installed and no applications are installed. The VM is configured with the correct operation system type. What seems odd to me, is that the performance off the machine started of quite nice and deteriorated along the way. When pressing the start button it can take up to 15 seconds before appearing. I almost looks like a IRQ problem of the video adapter.

The mouse pointer seems to move erradically along it's path, slowing down and speeding up. It looks quite the same as grandma behind the wheel of a car. Speeding up...Slowing down...Speeding up. You get the picture.

32 bit VM's and windows 2003 64-bit VM's do not show any signs and work quitte nice. Does somebody experienced similar problems with the windows 2008 64-bit VM's?

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[VMmatty]

Are you seeing this when using the Console in the VI Client, or with RDP (or both)? I have seen certain situations in which I get poor performance on VMs when using the VI Client but using RDP the performance is just fine.

Could it be some of the Windows 2008 graphic settings? Do you have "Adjust for best performance" configured in the VM instead of "Adjust for best appearance?"

[frankdenneman]

Good idea!

I haven't used a RDP session, will do that first thing in the morning.

I have used the settings from Jeremy Waldrop's blog, including the best performance setting.

http://jeremywaldrop.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/how-to-build-a-windows-2008-vmware-esx-vm-template/

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[aaronb123]

Hi Frank!

I have the exact same problem on Windows 2008 x64 STD created froma template.

I did turn off UAC, which improved the server overall performance but the server is still very slow, etc. I look forward to any possible solutions...

Aaron B

[frankdenneman]

Turning off UAC didn't help.

The Console session is terrible slow, it's driving me nuts,

RDP on the otherhand is faster, but IMHO w2k8 console should be fast as well

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[VMmatty]

Is there anything unique about the networking of these Win2k8 VMs compared to the others? And the VMware Tools are installed and running, right?

I have plenty of Win2k8 VMs and they all work just fine via the VI Client. But I have seen their performance be absolutely terrible if the VMware Tools are either not installed or installed but not running.

[chrisfmss]

Every time you change resolution, check your Hardware Acceleration setting.

[bwhitman1]

same problem for me on vista 64 bit and w2k8 64 bit. on w2k8, setting the acceleration to the max fixed. on vista no luck though and I've adjusted for performance.

[jcouvaras]

I'm also seeing the same issues with 64bit Windows 2008 Server.

I have other servers installed such as Windows 2000, Windows 2003 all 32bit and they are running 100%... It's almost as though the VMWare tools are not installed/working correctly with the 64bit version of 2008 Server?

I'm also running VMWare 3.5 Update 4 so perhaps there is some kind of issue with the version of VMWare tools that comes with this version of VMWare and working with a 64bit 2008 Server?

Would be nice to find out what is causing this issue?

Is any one running VMWare 3.5 Update 4 with the latest VMtools installed (that comes with Update 4) along with the 64bit version of Windows 2008 Server and does NOT have this issue? I see some people with Update 2 say they don't have the issue but have not seen any one with update 4 not have this issue as yet?

Regards

Jonathan

[Dan_Johnston]

Hi,

I'm experiencing the same issues. We have an ESX 3.5 setup (update 3) with three large hosts making up the ESX cluster and have found the Windows 2008 64 bit VMs are not performing well at all. As the earlier poster reported, ESX doesn't appear to be doing much (via esxtop) and at a VM level, the OS is not reporting that it's particularly busy (from TaskManager) either. There are loads of hardware resources available to these VMs and other Windows 2003 systems on the same hardware are performing significantly better. Performance is poor from both RDP and from the VM Console. This is especially noticable when launching the Exchange Management Console. Performance does not seem to be greatly better or worse on VMs with multiple vcpu's or single vcpus. Currently this Exchange environment is not live, so there is no load on it, so that is not a factor either.

Regards

Dan

[mariner78]

I'm having also weird slowness, windows 2008 server x64 enterprise. Kernel times in task manager are very high although not any single process consumes too much.

With 32-bit edition I have no troubles!

[Darksun777]

Exact same issue here! Windows 2008 x64 ist just unusable on ESX 3.5 U4 !

Any solution/suggestion for this?

Thanks!

[Steelsteed]

I seem to be having the same problem. Here is my system:

Host: Intel Core I7-920, 12gb ddr3-1333, 1tb hdd, sata raid 1. Host is running VMWare Server 2. (VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.x86_64.rpm) on Centos 5.3 x64

Guest: Win 2008 Web Server x64

The system started out fairly snappy after first install, but not even a day later, its getting slow. I see very high kernel cpu time, especially on login, and on launching or closing applications or services.

Did you guys find a way to fix this by any chance ?

I have tried this also on a different host hardware config of a Intel q9400 quad core, 8gb ddr2, 500gb sata software raid 1. Same problem. Also was running Centos 5.3 x64 and win 2008 x64 as guest. I have tried a complete reinstall of the guest, and the same problem happens. It gets really sluggish. I am using remote desktop/rdp as I find the vmware console so slow it takes forever to move.

[bwhitman1]

i had the slow console response (really just mouse) and i was able to fix by manually updating the mouse driver in windows to use the vmware mouse driver. Also make sure you have hardware acceleration turned on under the display settings. I never looked at the kernel performance stats though when i was having this issue.

[Timjh]

Where can I find this vmware mouse driver? I'm experiencing this same issue with poor VI client performance with w2k8 x64

thanks

[RParker]

The console in VI Client is a proxy from the ESX host. So you have to connect to a client, which then talks to the host, which then uses some backend process to produce that console screen, then you can get access to the console of the OS.

EVERY OS is slower in console rather than DIRECT access (RDP, remote desktop), because you aren't going through so many layers. So the solution is to use RDP / Remote Desktop, not the VI console.

[bbambrick]

Of course every OS is slower through the console, but not THAT much slower. Win2008 is the only OS which seems to have those issues.

I've just solved the problem which I was seeing, i.e. the usability of the VM from a console window, by doing what was already mentioned earlier in the article:

1. Make sure that H/W acceleration is set to full

2. Go into Device Manager & Check your Mouse Driver. It should be "VMware pointing device".

• If it's not, right-click the current driver, choose update driver software

• choose "browse..." then "let me pick...".

• Assuming you have VMware tools installed you should see "VMware pointing device" listed. When I changed to that, the mouse worked properly.

[sergiomca]

I just resolved:

1.- Change driver > Go to screen resolution >Advanced settings > Properties > Driver > Update Driver

2.- Select Browse my computer for driver software

3.- Select the path C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\video > Next

4.-  Reboot VM

5.- Change driver > Go to screen resolution >Advanced settings > Troubleshoot > Change settings > Full

6.- OK

That resolved my issue with slow performance thru console, RDP was fine.

Serch

[calvinrobinson]

Yes, I also seem to recall applying a certain SVGA driver to the Server 2008 VM fixed this but it's been a while since I encountered this.

[sgonzalez]

Hello,

Just solved my issue. Join a little fig of my spanish serer.

Thanks everybody