Need help: WHS VM on Hyper-V

sabregen

sabregen

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Jun 6, 2005
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Copied all of my data off of my physical WHS to backup drives. Tore down physical WHS box, loaded 2k8 R2 Std. Loaded drivers, installed updates, installed Hyper-V and built WHS on an 80GB virtual Disk (10GB used right now). I've tried everythng I can think of to fix two issues:

1.) Hyper-V based WHS VM shutting itself down (actually does a shutdown, not just powering off) every 2 hours
2.) Network performance to or from the WHS VM is abysmal. Will run at normal speeds, then drop... then pick back up /repeat. Seems to cycle every 2-3 minutes

Here's what I've tried:

1.) Uninstalled Integration Services from WHS VM
2.) Powered VM off
3.) Removed Virtual NIC, saved config
4.) Re-added Virtual Nic, attached it back to the Host adapter
5.) Powered VM back on
6.) Re-installed Integration Services
7.) Rebooted
8.) Checked Host and VM Control Panel / Power Configs. Set both to never turn off anything
9.) Turned off TCP Offload on Host NIC and VM Virtual NIC

....still no progress. The VM shuts itself down when I'm not "doing anything" in the VM, itself (not logged in, or not wiggling the mouse in the console view, etc). If I wiggle the mouse or do something, this keeps it from shutting down. On the network side, I have absolutely no change to the situation. We're talking 7.5MB/s copies from any machine on the network, and it's all GbE with no previous issues. All physical hosts can send data without issue and exhibit normal performance.

I've tried googling around, and have found many instance of the same thing being reported, but sadly, none of the yet discovered fixed have been successful for me.

PLEASE HELP! This is a showstopper, and if I can't fix it by this weekend, I'll end up going back to a physical WHS and just bag this idea.
 
Don't recall I had to do anything special with my WHSv1 VM setup. Other than I'm using 2008R2 Enterprise, but I doubt that's an issue.

Are you sure you've got ALL power management features disabled? How about the ones in the BIOS of the host 2008R2 server itself? Don't guess they'd matter but I've got mine disabled. As are all power management features of anything in the host.

You don't have any scheduled tasks set up on it, do you? Start->Accessories->System Tools->Scheduled Tasks

What about updates? Some do perform restarts. How is your VM configured to act on restart? The setup within the Hyper-V manager has the settings for this.

Finally, what does it say about it in the VM event log? And in the host event log?
 
Lets get a screenshot of the VM settings.

Also you say you built your WHS. Besides inserting the CD/iso and letting the installer run, what else did you do?
 
wkearney99 said:
Don't recall I had to do anything special with my WHSv1 VM setup. Other than I'm using 2008R2 Enterprise, but I doubt that's an issue.

Are you sure you've got ALL power management features disabled? How about the ones in the BIOS of the host 2008R2 server itself? Don't guess they'd matter but I've got mine disabled. As are all power management features of anything in the host.

You don't have any scheduled tasks set up on it, do you? Start->Accessories->System Tools->Scheduled Tasks

What about updates? Some do perform restarts. How is your VM configured to act on restart? The setup within the Hyper-V manager has the settings for this.

Finally, what does it say about it in the VM event log? And in the host event log?
Click to expand...

The only scheduled tasks that I have are DEMigrator Off and On. Set to turn off @ 3:00pm weekdays, and turn back on at 6:00am weekdays. This leaves it off when I'm home and streaming, and also on the weekends.

Power management in BIOS is completely disabled. Host is set up to be High Profile, and all power management (including display) is turned off. WHS VM is set to always on, as well, and to never sleep the display. Auto Updates are ON, but there's no updates left for it to get.

I have not yet checked the logs.

The VM Power On / Off with the Host going up or down is set to start with the host, and shutdown the guest OS when powering down the host.

nitrobass24 said:
Lets get a screenshot of the VM settings.

Also you say you built your WHS. Besides inserting the CD/iso and letting the installer run, what else did you do?
Click to expand...

WHS VHD is on the desktop of the local host. Host drive (the only one the host gets) is an Intel X25-V 40GB SSD. I put in the WHS installer disk and made the 80GB VHD thin provisioned and let it finish up. Downloaded Windows updates, and then installed Integration Services in the VM. Turned off the VM and disabled host access to the would be WHS Storage Pool drives by offlining them. Mapped them as SCSI passthrough disks to the VM, booted the VM. Added drives to the storage pool, started copying data back to my WHS storage pool.

What screenshot do you want? The Hyper-V VM hardware config page?
 
vm settings:
whsvmsettings1.jpg


vm power settings:
whsvmpower.jpg


host power settings:
hostpower.jpg
 
found out why it's shutting down:
shutdownerror.jpg


I know it's heavily scripter SBS 2003, which NEVER likes joining another domain... maybe I need to re-read WHS / AD integration how-to's and retrace my steps. nitro, what are you doing with your WHS VM? is it on the domain?
 
You can't have WHS joined to a domain. You can still use it from machines that are one the domain, of course. There would have to be WHS accounts setup for them. Same name/password would make it less inconvenient for them. For here at home that's how I do it.

Yes, it would be nice is MS wasn't so asinine about how they crippled some of their products. Just look at what integration with other server OSes has done to destroy WHS anyway. Giant steps backwards, and for what, some inter-department infighting? Jerks.
 
Yea i dont have mine on the domain. I just use the same account names and passwords so i dont have authentication issues.
 
Also change you network interface card to legacy and your performance should improve.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Also change you network interface card to legacy and your performance should improve.
Click to expand...

Now I learned something new. I thought the legacy adapter was mainly used for non-Windows VMs. I'm going to try this out tonight to see if it improves performance.
 
I had found an integration guide that walked me through putting it ont he domain, which I thought I would try, but knowing full wel that the limitations of SBS 2k3 would likely cause issue... I just didn't think it would be that cause of the powering off issue tha I was seeing.

I'm going to try the legacy NIC options and report back.
 
Legacy adapter doesn't seem to be working any better for me. Here's how I'm transferring files to the WHS Storage Pool from my backup drives:

USB drive interface to SATA Drive > USB connected to 2k8 Host > mapped WHS Share to Network drive > Robocopy script from USB drive to network mapped drive of WHS VM. the first part of the file (Blu-Ray .MKVs) starts out normally, then slows to a crawl.

I've tried hooking the drive up in the same manner to both my G73 laptop and my encoding machine, both exhibit the same performance issues.
 
this is what it looks like after a robocopy script starts on a file, and then just drops in performance to almost NOTHING. Note that it has not changed files here (so that doesn't account for the drop off) and that the file copy is a sequential read fromt he source disk and a sequential write to the target, all over wired Cat5E running at Gigabit speeds.

robocopy script is as follows: "robocopy.exe /e /r:1 /w:1 d: z:" Where D: is the source drive containing the .MKVs and Z: is the mapped network drive to the videos share on the WHS VM. Again, this is running from a USB connected 1TB WD Black 7200RPM 1002FAEX w/64MB of cache to the WHS Guest VM on the same box.

whsvmperformance.jpg



and this is what it looks like when the performance spikes for about 10 seconds or so on the same file. Again... the transfer starts out just fine, and then goes to hell... spikes... goes to hell... repeat. This continues on every file that I've transferred off and at this point we're nearing the end of 3TB of data over USB. Yeah...not fun.

typical10secondspike.jpg



Maybe I should go get a PCI-E x1 Intel GbE Dual port NIC and giving one to the host (and any future VMs) and one to just the WHS...? Thoughts?
 
nessus from the other thread that I started before this one (before think better of where I was posting, that is to say...) has a few questions that I copied from the other thread and will attempt to answer, in regards to the file transfer speeds


nessus said:
Sounds like the physical drives are transferring data slowly, ram frees up for caching after data finally spools out sufficiently, the cache fills back up to full, repeat. Pretty typical behavior for a 2k3 based box with disk write performance issues.

Same behavior on outgoing file copies?
Click to expand...

This one is From my ASUS G73 laptop over wired GbE to the WHS VM, copying files from the VMs shares over the wired GbE to my D:\ which is a freshly formatted Intel 80GB G2 SSD:

g73toWHSvm.jpg


This is My G73 laptop pulling a Blu-Ray .MKV rip off the of same previously mentioned WD 1TB Black hooked up the Hyper-V Host machine via USB, over the wired GbE connection. Note that the part of the performance graph before the usage goes up was before the file copy started. The performance shown here was sustained throughout the entire file transfer to my laptops D:\ (Intel G2 80GB SSD):


USB1TBonHyper-VhosttoG73overGbE.jpg


nessus said:
How much RAM do you have allocated to your WHS?
Click to expand...

4GB in the host. The WHS VM has 2GB.

nessus said:
What is perfmon showing for disk queue lengths and other performance counters during the transfers in WHS?
Click to expand...

It appears that this is looking like the issue. disk queue length absolutely PEGS out when the transfer is initiated. Here's the scenario that caused this:

USB attached WD 1TB Black on the Hyper-V host machine. WHS VM Share mapped as Z:\ on the Hyper-V host. 1TB Drive on USB on the Host is D:. "robocopy /e /r:1 /w:1 d: z:"

diskqueuelengths.jpg


What is the performance reporting for the host reporting on its disk performance where the VHDs are hosted during these times?[/QUOTE]

Okay, the blue line is the Avg. Disk Queue length on D: of the Hyper-V Host machine (WD 1TB Black on USB). The tall spike was the Avg. Disk Queue length on C: (Intel X25-V 40GB SSD) of the Hyper-V host machine. Since the file started (4.8GB Blu-Ray .MKV rip) there was one previous spike like the one graphed here on C: as well, but the duration was equally as short

Hyper-VHostdiskqueuelengths.jpg
 
I was curious about the disk queue length being pegged out in the WHS VM's perfmon, so I expanded the view out to not just show overall disk queue length, but the individual logical drives. It's not the VHD on the 2k8 host (C: for the VM), and it's not the Storage Pool (D: in the logical drive lettering). It's the c:\fs\j entry. I would have to conclude that c:\fs\j is a hidden (from users view) mapping on the C: (VHD) of the VM that directs the WHS to a storage pool member... but which one?

expandedavgdiskqueuelengthwhsvm.jpg


I've already shown that the USB drive itself is capable of pulling data from to another machine at over 2x the sustained rate that I'm getting doing this file copy from the Hyper-V host to the WHS VM, so it's not the host, it's not the host's NIC, the NIC drivers, the WD 1TB Black, and it's not the USB, and it's not the physical network either. It's the destination on the WHS VM... time to start Googling, I think.
 
sabregen said:
found out why it's shutting down:
shutdownerror.jpg


I know it's heavily scripter SBS 2003, which NEVER likes joining another domain... maybe I need to re-read WHS / AD integration how-to's and retrace my steps. nitro, what are you doing with your WHS VM? is it on the domain?
Click to expand...

Just FYI, you can disable SBCore and prevent this from happening. You have to modify it under the profile tab on the service properties. Then you can join it to a domain, make it a DC, etc.

Now this never properly worked for me - I think part of the problem was that I was attempting to join to an SBS2008 domain, and I was running into GPO issues. Nonetheless, others have done this successfully.
 
Why not just passthrough the USBadaptor/backup drive to the WHS vm? then transfer locally?
 
^^ DAMNIT. didn't even think of that. FYI, ran chkdsk d: /f and also on c:, restarted the file copy... no dice. same c:\fs\j in logical disks under perfmon.exe pegged out. going to try the USB passthrough now and see if the same logical volume pegs out on the disk queue. Also, turning off DEMigrator didn't fix the issue.
 
okay...USB attached drives apparently HAVE to be mapped to the VM as IDE drives. Did SCSI... it showed up in the "Safely Disconnect Hardware" thing in the systray, but couldn't see it in Disk Management, or in the drive listings under My Computer. Data is copying now. c:\fs\j STILL pegged at 100%... DEMigrator is off, too. none of the other drives are pegged (not even the WD 1TB Black).

Think I have a bad drive? chkdsk reported no errors... but this is consistent. whichever physical disk c:\fs\j is mapped to, that's definitely the issue. I'd have never noticed this if I hadn't copied the data off and been in the process of rebuilding my WHS only to have to copy it back. scary... not everything on my WHS is duplicated, either. the vast majority of it isn't, actually (about 2TB of rips...300+ movies). that'd take a long damn time to recover from
 
Do you not have any extra SATA ports? Why even use the USB thing?
 
not currently, but I will tomorrow. got the SM SASL8 HBA and cables come tomorrow. the issue still exists though and im wondering if it isn't the one of the passed through disks (well I know it is, but i don't know which one).
 
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