Spies Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 I have imaged a Server 2012 R2 install to a VM, the vdisk is on a 1tb cache drive, i have allocated 4 cores of a Xeon and 8gb of RAM to it but it is very slow to startup and for the services to get going. Is this just an i/o limitation of using a mechanical hard drive? I'm also running pfsense (1gb ram, 1 core), Ubuntu with LAMP (2gb ram, 2 core) and a Windows 7 (4gb ram, 2 core) machine for PXE booting over the LAN. The unraid server is a dual cpu Xeon with 20gb ram. Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 3 minutes ago, Spies said: Is this just an i/o limitation of using a mechanical hard drive? I'm also running pfsense (1gb ram, 1 core), Ubuntu with LAMP (2gb ram, 2 core) and a Windows 7 (4gb ram, 2 core) machine for PXE booting over the LAN. Most likely with all the VM's competing for IO (especially if they all start concurrently) Quote Link to comment
Spies Posted March 25, 2017 Author Share Posted March 25, 2017 The other 3 were already running. Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 Windows isn't exactly known for being easy on disk I/O even when its idle... Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted March 26, 2017 Share Posted March 26, 2017 If you have one try running it on an unassigned (or cache) SSD, I'm running a 2012R2 VM and don't notice any significant difference compared to how it ran on bare metal. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted March 26, 2017 Share Posted March 26, 2017 Also, and since you mentioned imaged, make sure it's using the virtio driver, but an SSD will always perform much better, as I'm sure you already know. Quote Link to comment
Spies Posted March 26, 2017 Author Share Posted March 26, 2017 8 hours ago, johnnie.black said: Also, and since you mentioned imaged, make sure it's using the virtio driver, but an SSD will always perform much better, as I'm sure you already know. It's set to IDE under the VM settings but i have installed the VirtIO drivers once in Windows. Do i need to switch the vdisk to VirtIO and reboot? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted March 26, 2017 Share Posted March 26, 2017 1 minute ago, Spies said: It's set to IDE under the VM settings but i have installed the VirtIO drivers once in Windows. Do i need to switch the vdisk to VirtIO and reboot? Yes, but for it to work you need to add a second vdisk, a very small one will do, set it to virtio, start windows, make sure the virtio drivers are installed and the 2nd vdisk is detected, shutdown, change primary vdisk to virtio, boot windows. After this you can then remove the 2nd vdisk. Quote Link to comment
Spies Posted March 26, 2017 Author Share Posted March 26, 2017 Thank you for that, i didn't really understand the reasoning for doing that when i read the wiki, but it makes sense now. Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.