Question

Performance problems with Hyper-V

Asked by: mkrisz

Dear EE experts,

I have a Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 with a single guest VM running Windows XP SP3 and a custom thin client's terminal server software. My problem is that this hyper-V server has four processors and five Gb of RAM. In spite the fact that the server itself is a "strong" computer, the Windows XP machine shows me that the proccessor usage is nearly always over 50%. Ok, this is by csrss.exe, I love it for this sometimes. But when I look at the Hyper-V server over a terminal service window AT THE SAME TIME, it shows me that the Hyper-V Server 2008 R2's proccessor usage is 0-4% !!! Why? I think it should show me nearly the same thing that XP shows. What did I misconfigure?

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Asked On
2009-10-01 at 00:06:53ID24776102
Tags

performance

,

hyper-v

,

XP

,

windows

Topics

Hyper-V

,

Windows Server 2008

,

Hypervisor

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
9

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Answers

 

by: MCSA2003Posted on 2009-10-01 at 04:28:15ID: 25467539

When you installed Windows XP as a virtual machine, Hyper-V dedicates a certain amount of the processor to support the OS. The reason you are seeing a low usage in the Server is because you are seeing the entire processor usage for the entire server. The reason your seeing a lot of usage in the XP partition is because your seeing just the XP processor power which is only a small portion of the entire server processor. It is hard to explain in text, so here is a link that may help you understand a bit more.

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/02/28/hyper-v-virtual-machine-cpu-usage-and-task-manager.aspx

 

by: plimpiasPosted on 2009-10-01 at 06:45:23ID: 25468534

Virtual processors are medley dynamic pieces of pie that the host server splits off. I would recommend changing the number of processors to 4 on the xp machine and see what happends

 

by: velocipedePosted on 2009-10-01 at 15:15:09ID: 25473694

What type of processor did you define for the XP VM? I've found that XP performs better If I give it 2-4 "Pentium 4" processors rather than "Xeon".

 

by: plimpiasPosted on 2009-10-01 at 18:19:13ID: 25474544

Velocipede since he only has one vm that defeats the purpose, given the vm different processors only adjust the weight assigned to each vm

 

by: darkjedi213Posted on 2009-10-02 at 03:55:58ID: 25476639

CPU performance shown by the server and within the vm will always be different. Some technical detail about how the vm interacts with the system will always yield different numbers when watching stats like cpu usage, disk queue length, etc. A Microsoft MVP on their newsgroups said the numbers from within the guest OS are what you should trust, not the server.

Is the XP vm actually performing badly? Or are you just worried because the cpu is at 50%? Increasing the number of cores the vm has access to would be the simplest fix, but there's one unwritten caveat that can negate this option. When you install the guest OS on a vm, if you only have one CPU assigned to it, the installed OS will only ever use one CPU. When I setup my vm's, I always assign them 4 CPUs before the install, then scale it back afterwards. This tidbit came straight from the mouth of a Microsoft regional rep helping me setup my first 2008 Hyper-V install.

 

by: mkriszPosted on 2009-10-02 at 12:29:17ID: 25481216

Um the strange thing was that when I DEcreased the number of CPUs to only one!, the VP permormed better. Why can this happen?

 

by: darkjedi213Posted on 2009-10-02 at 12:54:43ID: 25481462

To elaborate on what I stated before, if your XP VM was setup for 1cpu, then the hardware abstract layer is using ACPI Uniprocessor kernel instead of the ACPI Multiprocessor kernel. Forcing more than one cpu on the system could have very negative effects, like those you were seeing. You might be able to do an inplace XP reinstall (boot off an XP disc, do not choose Repair the first time you see it, but a few steps later, choose repair when you see it again) if you want to get it updated to use the multiprocessor kernel, but as I've never tried, I'm not sure if that would work.

 

by: mkriszPosted on 2009-10-02 at 13:09:10ID: 25481617

How can I check that wich HAL is installed on that client computer?

 

by: darkjedi213Posted on 2009-10-02 at 13:52:43ID: 25482082

Go to device manager and look under "Computer".

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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