Windows Server 2012 R2 Bad Performance

[DXK5314]

Hello,

I've a vSphere cluster running with 7x IBM HS22V blades / 2x Intel Xeon X3650 / 256 GB memory in every host.

Running at vSphere 5.5 23202651, with around 150 VM's.

Since a few months we are implementing Windows Server 2012 R2, and since a few weeks we've a new Citrix environment running at 2012 R2 to.

Currently the performance of the Windows Server 2012 machines is really really bad.

The respond slow and it doesn't feel right, the older VM's (W2K8 R2) are running great.

I've searched the internet, and I found that a lot of people had/have problems running 2012 on vSphere.

But I didn't found any solutions or things I could try to solve our problems.

Hopefully you guys have some tips for me, because I'm stuck...

Thanks in advance!

Best regards,

DXK

[CoolRam]

please do get the esxtop logs for this virtual machine and analyze those with standard value.

[Srinivasu13]

Hi,

I agree with you even our 2012 are running slow in our environment.

Recommend you to verify below things on your 2012 VMs.

• do you have VMware tools installed in your guest? do you use paravirtualized SCSI adapter with your guest?
• host CPU usage - host -> performance tab -> advanced -> cpu - what is average CPU load on the host? is it over 75%? are there peaks over 90%? it may signal that host CPU is saturated.
• guest CPU usage - host -> select the vm -> performance tab -> advanced -> cpu - the same like above plus check the CPU READY TIME, is it over 2000ms? again, the host CPU may be saturated.
• guest memory usage - host -> vm -> performance tab -> advanced -> memory - if memory average is over 80% or peaks over 90% the guest may have higher memory demand and so it is another performance bottleneck.
• guest memory swapping/ballooning - host -> performance tab -> advanced -> memory - check swap-in/swap-out and balloon rates. if it is over zero the host is swapping or ballooning vm memory which may make the vm sluggish as it requires access to disks.
• storage overloaded - host -> performance tab -> advanced -> disk - check STOP DISK metric, if it is over 0 zero disks/LUNs may be overloaded. additionally, check read/write latencies, if it is over 10ms in average or over 20ms in peaks disks/LUNs are slow or overloaded.
• Microsoft patches are up to date?

[DXK5314]

"Hi,

I agree with you even our 2012 are running slow in our environment.

Recommend you to verify below things on your 2012 VMs.

 

• do you have VMware tools installed in your guest? do you use paravirtualized SCSI adapter with your guest?
• host CPU usage - host -> performance tab -> advanced -> cpu - what is average CPU load on the host? is it over 75%? are there peaks over 90%? it may signal that host CPU is saturated.
• guest CPU usage - host -> select the vm -> performance tab -> advanced -> cpu - the same like above plus check the CPU READY TIME, is it over 2000ms? again, the host CPU may be saturated.
• guest memory usage - host -> vm -> performance tab -> advanced -> memory - if memory average is over 80% or peaks over 90% the guest may have higher memory demand and so it is another performance bottleneck.
• guest memory swapping/ballooning - host -> performance tab -> advanced -> memory - check swap-in/swap-out and balloon rates. if it is over zero the host is swapping or ballooning vm memory which may make the vm sluggish as it requires access to disks.
• storage overloaded - host -> performance tab -> advanced -> disk - check STOP DISK metric, if it is over 0 zero disks/LUNs may be overloaded. additionally, check read/write latencies, if it is over 10ms in average or over 20ms in peaks disks/LUNs are slow or overloaded.
• Microsoft patches are up to date?"

- Yes, up to date version.

- No, we don't use SCSI adapters.

- CPU load = 8369 avg --> Max = 12195, Min 4995, so I guess this is good. No peaks over 90%. --> imgbox - fast, simple image host

- I see multiple lines, the green one goes over 2000 Mhz. --> imgbox - fast, simple image host

- Guest memory --> http://imgbox.com/UTg9bz5v

- Disk --> imgbox - fast, simple image host

- Storagepath --> imgbox - fast, simple image host

- All Microsoft Windows updates are installed on the W2K12 VM's.

Hopefully you can take a look at my printscreens, I'm stuck and don't see where it's going wrong.

[Srinivasu13]

Sorry I can't access your screen shots.

Can you test one VM with paravirtualized SCSI adapter & VMXNET3 NIC.

[Srinivasu13]

Also verify ESXi hosts are running with latest patches.

[williambishop]

Is it ALL 2012 boxes or just the ones running citrix?

[Wh33ly]

Not sure if your problem is VM performance related or maybe guest related, here is something I encountered:

We have a lot of Win2012 machines which run great, one of the first things I noticed when we started deploying  was the slow and sluggy mous which was caused by the mouse pointer shadow.

Go to the “control panel” and open “System”

Open “Advanced system settings and then click the “Settings” button at the performance field. In the tab “Visual effects” you see an option “Show shadows under mouse pointer”. After disabling this, the performance of the mouse was back to normal again.And the server looked much more responding

I also decided to set the settings to “Adjust for best performance” because this will decrease any other almost not noticable lag

Could be as simple as this if applicable.

[MCOV]

Please check this:

- change network adapter to vmxnet3 (instead of E1000E)

- disable tcp chimney offload (checking status with cmd: netsh int tcp show global)

- in adapter properties in adapter configuration on Advanced tab disable: Large Send Offload V2, Recv Segment Coalescing and TCP Checksum Offload

[skelpie]

Hi guys !

I think i've solved the problem, but i don' know how can this happened.

Here what i've done.

I have ESXI 6.5 Dell version on Dell R900 Server. There is a Windows 2012 R2 on it. After installation the performance was very poor. When i started to upgrade the Hypervisor (because of hardware incompatibility of R900 'vve installed first ESXI 6.0 then updated to 6.5)

After upgrading i've reregister th VM W2012R2 and the performance was brilliant. Then i upgrade VM's version from 9 to 13 - (esxi 6.5 and later) - performance was sh..t.

My conclusion

When use for ESXI 6.5. VM W2012R2 with hw. compatibility level 9 - everything is superb

My best config on 4 Xeon 7350 is 2 VCPU's 4 Cores each

Now is blasting!!!!

[Maddas68]

We are experiencing the same problem with some Windows 2012 R2 servers, especially RDP/Citrix servers. Downgrading from Virtual Machine Version 13 to version 9 solves the problem.

The question is, why is this happening? Why do Windows Server 2012 R2 have problems with VMWare Version 13?

[peterriederer]

Hi Folks,

you also have performance issues with Windows 2016 Servers? Our 2012R2 Servers are running quite well on ESXi 6.5 latest patch and VMware Version 13.

But the 2016 Servers are really poor, even if they only have 1 vCPU and only 4GB RAM. With more vCPU they are a bit faster.

Regards

Peter

[peterriederer]

Since a few days we have the same Problem here.

We are using vSphere 6.5 and HW-Level 13 several weeks now, and it worked quite well, with our RDP and Fileservers.

But since a few days It all started with Veeam Backup stopped / wasnt able using VSS anymore while backing up our main fileserver.

From this time our W2K12R2 File-Server went slower and slower. 100% Disk-Activity, Disk-Queues running high and Disk-Latency in Windows showed more then 700 - 1000 ms. We tried a lot... uninstalled Windows Updates, uninstalled Anti Virus, rebooted the SAN, rebooted ESX-Hosts, nothing helped.  First we used LSI SAS Controller (same Problem) and now we are using Paravirtuell controller and VMNEXT NIC. If there is just a very little load on the machine, it is going to get unusable, and just small word and excel files take forever to open and to save.

Now we tried to go back to HW-Level 10 for both Fileservers and it is working again, without any Problems. For testing purpose we tried to upgrade to HW-Level 11. One Fileserver is ok with that the other one we got the same problems again, hence we went back again to HW-Level 10.

But it seems more and more Machines are getting sluggish now, Medical-Application with an oracle Database (W2K8R2 Server) now also gets slower and slower, and the application takes a very long time to load.

Does anybody have any news or and helpful Tipps and Tricks?

Regards

Peter

[Moonduza]

I Would do the following:

- Add a VMXNet3 NIC
- Use Paravirtual Storage Controller
- Update VMware tools
- Check the host power management configuration and, if possible use high performance.