Question

vSphere 4.0 - Guest Performance very slow

Asked by: cvservices

Hello,
I'm a little bit stomped with this problem. I have a vSphere environment in one of my schools, where there is an ESX server 4.0, running on a Dell PowerEdge 1950, with 32Gb of RAM, and 2 146Gb 15K SAS in a RAID 1 config. (This is only for testing, and will be having an OpenFiler connected via iSCSI for my VMWare View implementation.), for now this is irrelevant though. h

The problem I am having is that the Guest OS that I'm bringing up on that host  are operating agonizingly slow, and I can't figure out why. The guest resources are mostly idle, as well as the resources on the host. I have isolated all the problems, and connected only to one of the NICs on virtual machine network port group, I tweaked the switch settings, which in this case is a 3Com 4200G (Gigabit). Nothing I have done seems to make any sense. everything  looks like it should work, but doesn't. here's an esxtop from my server ...  maybe it'll help.

Any help in this regard would be greatly appreciated. if you need any other information, please let me know, I'd be happy to provide it.

Just for reference, I have the same exact setup running at another school, except that the host is a PE 2950 instead of a 1950, it works like a charm there.

6:34:52pm up  1:16, 183 worlds; CPU load average: 0.01, 0.01, 0.01
PCPU USED(%):   0.2   1.0   0.1   0.2   0.4   0.9   1.3   3.2 AVG:   0.9
PCPU UTIL(%):   0.4   1.3   0.2   0.3   0.5   1.1   1.6   3.0 AVG:   1.1
 
     ID    GID NAME             NWLD   %USED    %RUN    %SYS   %WAIT    %RDY   %IDLE  %OVRLP   %CSTP  %MLMTD  %SWPWT
      1      1 idle                8  792.48  792.94    0.00    0.00    7.12    0.00    0.01    0.00    0.00    0.00
      2      2 system              6    0.01    0.01    0.00  600.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
      3      3 vim                 1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
      6      6 helper             49    0.03    0.04    0.00 4900.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
      7      7 drivers            11    0.00    0.00    0.00 1100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
      8      8 vmotion             4    0.00    0.00    0.00  400.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
     13     13 vmkapimod           7    0.00    0.00    0.00  700.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
     16     16 init.4181           1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    159    159 busybox.4322        1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    163    163 vmklogger.4326      1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    585    585 vmkiscsid.4756      2    0.01    0.01    0.00  200.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    635    635 FT                  1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    708    708 busybox.4888        1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    748    748 ntpd.4927           1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    764    764 sh.4943             1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    774    774 vobd.4953           8    0.00    0.00    0.00  800.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    786    786 sh.4971             1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    796    796 hostd.4981         13    0.52    0.55    0.00 1299.74    0.07    0.00    0.03    0.00    0.00    0.00
    815    815 slpd.5002           1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    877    877 sh.5064             1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    887    887 openwsmand.5074     3    0.00    0.00    0.00  300.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    904    904 sh.5093             1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    913    913 vpxa.5102          21    0.36    0.37    0.00 2100.00    0.04    0.00    0.02    0.00    0.00    0.00
    956    956 sh.5167             1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    984    984 sh.5195             1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    989    989 sh.5200             1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
    991    991 busybox.5202        1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1000   1000 net-cdp.5211        1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1008   1008 ash.5221            1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1009   1009 ash.5222            1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1016   1016 dcui.5229           1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1017   1017 ash.5230            1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1021   1021 busybox.5234        1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1131   1131 sfcbd.5342          1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1132   1132 cimslp.5343         1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1134   1134 sfcbd.5345          1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1135   1135 sfcbd.5346          1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
   1137   1137 sfcbd.5349          1    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00

                                  
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Asked On
2009-08-28 at 11:37:05ID24690743
Tags

VMWare

,

vSphere 4.0

,

Guest

,

Windows XP

Topics

Microsoft Virtual Server

,

VMware

,

Virtualization

Participating Experts
1
Points
20
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-08-28 at 12:13:28ID: 25210723

No clue for now, did you install vmware tools?

 

by: cvservicesPosted on 2009-08-28 at 12:15:11ID: 25210740

Yup VMWare tools are installed.

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-08-28 at 12:19:06ID: 25210772

Hows the graph at the vSphere client under Performance tab? Looking good as well for both host and vm?

 

by: cvservicesPosted on 2009-08-28 at 12:35:43ID: 25210938

Here are a couple of the summaries for the performance of the host (picture-10, and picture-11), and one of the Guests (Picture-12, Pictures-13)

 

by: cvservicesPosted on 2009-09-21 at 08:00:35ID: 25383589

I got the issue resolved. The problem ended up being with the NID at that site. Had to contact the provider to get it replaced.

Mods, please go ahead and refund the points as there was no solution provided to this question.

Thanks,

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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