Windows server 2016 react very slow and feel laggy

[Arnold_Mishaev]

Hello everybody,

I'm System integration and under my responsibility have many companies, I have multiple ESXI vCenter servers, in past six mounts we had upgrade near to 30 hosts and we also upgrade VMs from Server 2008 R2 to Server 2016 VMs.

the thing is windows server 2016 VMs they react very slow and it's feels laggy, in the same host i have 2008 R2 vm installed and it's react very fast and working good......

and it's not performance issue at all, cause i monitored the performance of host and also of all vm's, and i find there is more than 50% of resources available all the time.

to me it's seems to be a specific issue with server 2016.

Does anyone of you encounter with this issue?

I would glad to get some help from you

Thanks.

[daphnissov]

Sounds like you either need to open a case with Microsoft or ask on a Microsoft forum. Also, just my two cents here, but doing an in-place upgrade on such an old OS was a mistake.

[Arnold_Mishaev]

thank you for replying,

for any misunderstand i didn't upgrade vm 2008 r2 to 2016 from same vm, i've create new vm 2016

[daphnissov]

Ok, that's not called an "upgrade" that's a "migration".

[larstr]

Arnold Mishaev,

Some subsystems seems to have changed in Windows Server 2016 compared to 2008 and while a 2008 Server would run fine on a single cpu, 2016 will typically not run equally fine as it seems that 2016 is badly tuned for single cpu loads. 2016 also seem to like a bit more memory so you should check that you have right sized your 2016 VMs after upgrading.

I would also check if Power Saving has been configured correctly in BIOS. Default BIOS settings will normally give bad performance.

Lars

[vNinjaDFW]

What version of ESXi are you running? What VMware tools and Hardware version is your VM on? Do you have vROPs in this environment to help troubleshoot? What back-end storage are you running?

[Arnold_Mishaev]

ESXI version: 6.5.0 Update 2 (Build 10719125)

VMware tools version: VMware Tools 10.2.1 build 8267844

Hardware: Dell PowerEdge T430

CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10GHz

RAM: 64GB

Controller: PERC H730 Adapter

The back-end Storage: Direct Attach storage, Raid5

VMFS version: 6.81

I don't have "vROPs"

[vNinjaDFW]

Can you get the VM's performance for disk read\write speeds? Also, what disk controller & nic adapter (vmxnet3) is the VM using? How many procs\cores are on this physical host? I'd also like to see esxtop results from the Host for cpu, memory & storage.

[Arnold_Mishaev]

Good Morning,

Please take a look at attachment for disk performance

Disk Controller: PERC H730 Adapter (PCI Slot 3)

     Firmware Version: 25.5.5.0005

     Driver Version: 7.705.10.00

     Cache memory size: 1024 MB

nic adapter: vmxnet3

CPU: only one cpu "8 CPUs x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10GHz"

[larstr]

Arnold Mishaev,

from the command prompt of Your ESXi host, what is the output of the following command?

vsish -e get /Power/hardwareSupport

Lars

[Arnold_Mishaev]

hello Lars,

That is the output

[larstr]

ah.. you're running 6.5. Then the command requires a non-capital p in Power:

vsish -e get /power/hardwareSupport

Lars

[Arnold_Mishaev]

I've got this result

[larstr]

Very good, Arnold!

Now we can see your problem.

Your BIOS is configured to save electricity by shutting down the cpu while it's not in use.

The easy solution is to disable powersaving completely, the optimal solution may be to allow p-states and disable c-states.

Lars

[Arnold_Mishaev]

So changing in ESXI power management policy to "High performance"  will do the job?

How to disable power saving completely trough ESXI?

[larstr]

No, it will not do the job. You will need to configure this in the BIOS of your host.

Lars

[Arnold_Mishaev]

Thank you Lars, i will try it

[WWSupport]

I'm experiencing the same issue with Windows Server 2016, just curios if you have made the change to the BIOS and if it made a difference?

[Arnold_Mishaev]

yes, it's improve the performance

[Reza Ardaneh]

Hi

Can you please share one of your windows 2016 VM configuration (screenshot of VM settings is great)?

[Arnold_Mishaev]

Hi

[bbiandov]

The 2016 server issue is a known problem which I have confirmed to be solved by following the advice here:

Windows Server 2016 Really slow on ESXI 6.5

Thankfully I have also confirmed that 2019 does NOT exhibit the same issue, it works fine from the get go with no need to modify anything, and by "works fine" I mean it is fast just as any other OS when installed under ESXi (VM tools or no tools installed, it doesn't make any difference).

~B

[Arnold_Mishaev]

Thank you Boyan for sharing this information.

My vm using as RDS 2016 for 5 users, those command will resolve the graphic slow motion issue?

and what actually this command doing?

[bbiandov]

Hi BEArnold201110141​, I can only confirm that the issue for me was resolved while running 2016 standard, as for what the commands do, I am far from claiming Windows Server guru status but it has to do with the file system delete flag that for some reason takes forever on ESXi to complete, there's no loss of functionality or exposure to compromised data integrity with theses flags disabled but of course I can't vouch for this solution. All I can confirm is that it worked for me. However this is all moot point by now because the issue does not exist with Server 2019. I have confirmed that while being a bit skeptical when deploying new VMs since I expected to have to do the same thing by hand on those 2019 VM only to discover that they run fast and there is no need for a "fix"