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HamannWetteren

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Windows 2008 R2 SP1 on VM

last weekend we did an upgrade on 15 Windows 2008 R2 servers to SP1.
All these machines are VM's on vSphere 4.1.

Now we have serious network performance issues with only 1 of the machines.
unfortnuately it is our one and only Exchange server....

The other servers on the same ESXi host, have NO problems at all.
We already tried the following:
* uninstall SP1 = NOK (so we re-installed SP1 again)
* migrated machine to other ESX = NOK
* tests with Exchange services down = NOK
* removed VM LAN adapters and re-install = NOK

Looking desperate for a solution ??

thanks !


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Chris
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what are the issues - from client to server or from server to client

you can use reliability monitor to see what is using network bandwidth

what kind of adapters are you using VMnet 3?
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Sid_F

Is there anything in event viewer on the slow 2008vm? Is it slow or dropping out. Maybe unrelated http://communities.vmware.com/message/1834630#1834630
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ASKER

when we do a ping from client to server, we get a lot of timeouts.
Bandwith is not an issue I think, because other servers on the same ESX-host work very well.
The adapters are VMnet 3
Hi

Try to uninstall VMware tools and installed again.

I remember that ware some issues with SP1 on 4.1.

If doesn't work, try remove VMware tools and see if you have any difference.

Jail
Correction: the adapters are E1000
@bestway

forgot to mention: we did uninstall VMWARE tools = NOK
and re-install VMWARE tools = NOK
Hi

Did you add/remove any network adapter on that server? Adding or removing Network adapter can take some issues(with IPs and DNS).

Did you use vmxnet adapters?

Jail
Get rid of the E1000 and use vmxnet3 adaptors.
@neilsr

Why would we do this? Our other servers all have E1000 without any issues?

they work better - you should only use E1000's for old OS's and in some situations for NLB's
Vmware Best Practise to use vmxnet3 adaptors where possible - especially with 2008R1
Hi

Also with vmxnet you will have 10Gb.

Jail
Add a new VMXNET3 network interface card.

The E1000 is a legacy network interface which is used for installation only.

The VMXNET3 network card performs much better, and uses less overhead on the ESX host.
Ok, I changed to VMXNET3, but still getting these time-outs
might be time for NetMon to be installed either on the server or on a client that you are seeing timeouts from

can you vmotion the server to another host?
@irweazelwallis

as we said in the original message:
migrated machine to other ESX = NOK

thanks anyway
dissable firewall on server
dissable AV/AS on server

retest
Firewall is disabled, no AV/AS on that server
And as others have stated in your question to my comment. No server should be using the E1000 unless you have a specific need to do so. its OLD SLOW technology.

What happens if you run a ping -t between this server and another server running on the same VM host?
Neil,
If we do a ping from the server to another server on the same VM host, that works fine
Any news guys ??

We did another test yesterday: all traffic from the SLOW server towards other devices is OK.
So the problems is only in one way, all traffic towards the (so called) SLOW server.

can you do a tracert for that server and compare to another server on that same host to see if its taking any crazy route to it
tracert for both servers is the same, no crazy routes
Okay, Can we look at the vSwitch and Networking configuration please, please upload screenshots, of Networking and Network Adaptors on the HOST.
@hanccocka,
we can do that, BUT, how do you explain that it works perfect for other servers on the same host, using the same vSwitch settings, network config and adaptors ??
You could have an issue with a particular physical NIC, or switch port.
fully agree, but why only on that particular VM server and not on the other ones using the same hardware, and running on the same VM host?
they are all on the same Port group on the Same Vswitch?
i.e. no traffic shaping is taking place
how are you quantifying slow performance?
I changed the IP-address on that particular server and the problem is gone...???

And no, before you ask, the original IP-address is NOT double used.
Problem is not gone...., even worse, we had to reinstall full Exchange server.

Now, whenever we connect from a remote site to this server, the server freezes for a few seconds, and we can't get Outlook connection to that server.
It's not an Exchange problem, because a simple "dir \\servername\c$ /s" command gives no response either.

I have setup now a second VM-server, on the same ESX-host, but without Exchange installed, and that server can be reached without any issues from remote sites
So it could be exchange that's causing the slow running. Do you have BES running and what version of exchange?

No BES running, Exchange 2010 SP1 / Rollup 5 on Windows 2008 R2 server
Have you run net mon to see what network traffic is coming and going from the server.
and what do you expect me to see there?
What underlying datastore do we have for this server?

What is the performance like of this VM? e.g. CPU, memory etc?

What are the specifications of this VM, vm memory, cpus, ?
@hanccocka:

* NETAPP FS2020
* performance = ok
* RAM = 16Gb, 2 CPU
please upload screenshots of networking and network adapters of the host server.
Well if you are having network issues you can look at a network capture and see if it is getting a lot of traffic either generated from itself going out or traffic coming in.  I.e broadcast traffic, source and destination see whether there is anything you don't recognize.
@hanccocka
I can upload these screenshots, but explain me first why it works fine for Server1 and Server2 on the same host Esxi server, and not for Server3.
They use all 3 the same hardware and settings.....???
because they could be using different physical uplinks.
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