Virtual Machine very slow after migrating from ESX 4 to ESXi 5

[arno84]

Hi,

we migrated our ESX Cluster from ESX 4 to new Hardware with ESXi 5. We migrated a lot of virtual machines and everything works fine.

We only have one VMware which makes trouble because it is very very slow. Its a Windows 2003 Server with a little helpdesk tool installed. This virtual machine is very slow. There is not a lot of CPU and memory usage but every mouse klick on this machine needs a while until the system recognize it.

What we already did:

- Installed the latest VMWare tools

- Gave more memory and CPU

- Migrated the virtual machine to another host and another datastore

- Checked eventlog without success

Has anybody an idea how to get this server faster? Please tell me if you need further informations.

Regards,

Arno

[kjb007]

Did you check the cpu/memory and make sure there are no limits set for this vm?

-KjB

[arno84]

Yes I checked cpu/memory and checkt the limits. There is no limit set for this vm.

[a_p_]

Did you already double check/adjust the display settings for the VM (Hardware Acceleration)

see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1011702

André

[nlevien]

What display driver do you have installed?

[arno84]

The hardware accelleration is enabled.

In the device manager I have two entries for the display adapter:

VMware SVGA II, driver version 11.7.10.0

ConfigMgr Remote Control Driver, driver version 4.0.5733.0

The virtual machine is also slow when I access the ticket system on the server via browser from another PC. So I don't know if the issue has something to do with the display adapter?

When I do a click in the ticket system, for example to choose a category on another PC, I can see in the task manager of the VMware, that CPU is on 100% for a few seconds. After that CPU is down and I will get the result in the browser. But this is not a problem with the ticket system, if I do anything else on the VMware it is very similar.

[a_p_]

Just another guess, although not very likely since you mentioned you just migrated from v4 to v5.

Does the Windows 2003 VM run with the correct HAL (uniprocessor vs. multiprocessor)?

André

[arno84]

How can I check this?

[a_p_]

You can find the currently used HAL in the device manager. See http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003978 for details.

André

[arno84]

Thanks for the link!

In the device manager I have this device:

ACPI-Multiprocessor-PC - driver version: 5.2.3790.3959

Is this device correct? I checked an onther VMware with Windows 2003, there I have a device called MPS-Uniprozessor-PC. But this machine also has only one CPU.

[a_p_]

In your initial post you mentioned

Gave more memory and CPU

Depending on the Windows 2003 Servicepack used, Windows may automatically upgrade to the Multiprocessor HAL but not downgrade if you revert the VM to 1 vCPU.

I'm not sure about the MPS-Uniprocessor HAL for the other VM though. Is this a converted system (P2V)!?

If you are going to manually change the HAL for any system, make sure you take a snapshot to be able to revert in case the VM does not work correctly.

André

[arno84]

A collegue of me upgradet the CPU from 1 to 2 because the VMware was slow... Shall I try to downgrade the CPU to 1? When I downgrade the machine, how can I downgrade the HAL to 1 CPU?

I'm not sure if this is a converted system. But I think it is not.

[nlevien]

Hi,

I am currently on annual leave until the 2nd of July with no access to email.

If you have an urgent request please forward it to [e-mail].

Regards,

Neil Levien

[arno84]

Just in the moment I downgraded the CPU back to 1. I rebooted the system and the machine was really slow. A lot of slower than bevor. I tried to search for new hardware in the device manager but the ACPI-Multiprocessor-PC could not be changed.

Then I upgraded the virtual machine to 4 CPUs. After that it is a lot of faster than with 1 CPU. But still too slow.

[MartinAmaro]

what hardware version is the VM? Is it at least version 7? ***Do not upgrade to version 8** or it will not poweron in ESX 4.

Did you make sure system Hardware Acceleration is set to full?

have you tried using the VMware SVGA 3D driver instead? ( I know it solved the issue on windows 2008)

[IZENVM]

I'm having the same issues after a migration from ESX 4 to ESX 5. Its hard to see what the problem is. Most migrated VM's run fine and are in fact upgraded to hardware version 8. The HAL is the correct HAL for all of them.

I've changed the hardware version back to version 7 for the most troublesome servers like the Citrix and ERP servers and this eleviates the problem somewhat, but it doesn't solve it. I've had to move the ERP back to the ESX4 environment already and the performance seems back ok.

I've read this article (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2010359) too and although we don't use View it did make the server perform slightly better.

The old ESX 4 environment is setup with 3 HP Proliants with a single Xeon 5520 each. The new environment is setup with 3 Dell Poweredge R715s with 2 Opteron 6212 CPU's each.

Any ideas?

[IZENVM]

I think I've found the problem in my case. The power management of the processor was not setup correctly.

In my case, I've changed the power management BIOS setting for the processors to OS control and limited the min and max CPU state in the Windows servers and changed the power plan to high performance.

This seems to do the trick.