Slow deployment

[Vitaly91]

Guys,

A customer of mine is running vCenter 4.0. They have Windows Vista template that is 25GB in size.

Their ESX servers are running vSphere and are attached to an iSCSI storage.

When they try to deploy a VM from this template, it take a very long time. It takes them about an hour to deploy it!

I have tried to convert it to VM, clone it, convert the new one back and deploy but it did not help. VM was originally imported from Workstation 6 into vCenter.

Any ideas on why it takes so long and what I could check/tweak?

Thank you in advance for the advice!

[VMmatty]

It is probably related to the storage that you've got. Does it take the same amount of time to deploy a similary sized virtual machine? The guest OS type shouldn't influence how long it takes to deploy.

[azn2kew · Accepted solution]

Most likely is the storage disks and raid configurations and network throughput. I would check out iSCSI performance analysis to see any bottlenecks, if not I would load brand new Vista from "Create New VM" wizard just to make sure not pointing fingers from VMware Workstation 6.0 conversion process and test clone from template again to see which one is faster!

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[Vitaly91]

I have tried to create a new VM and deploy it. Seems to be the same. So the issue has to be on the storage or network side.

I have posted some info here: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/227284?tstart=0

Any ideas?

Thank you for trying to help!

[bulletprooffool]

If this VM is 25GB in USED space, then I am not surprised that it takes so long to deploy.

If it is just the notrmal 2 gigs, with a 25 gig disk, then you do have a problem.

[Vitaly91]

It's just VMs with a 25GB vmdk that have Windows XP and some apps installed.

[Vitaly91]

Thank you all!

It was a vendor iSCSI storage issue. We ended up switching to using NFS from iSCSI.