Hi Brett, Underlying hardware is SCSI (DAS) with very low disk contention.
Lockup were in the guest OS. Lockups consisted of no keyboard or mouse access to the guest and no network access from the host or remote systems. An additional guest VM (without Exchange) was running on the hosts hardware at the same time. The only difference in VM configuration was the controller type - SCSI vs. IDE. After changing the controller type to IDE on problem VM and reapplying the VM Additions (just in case) I have not experienced another lockup. Regards, Aric Bernard -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brett Shirley Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 5:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Exchange in VM (was RE: [ActiveDir] Running DCs in Virtual Se rver 2005 - whitepaper) Aric, So I wanted to followup on this ... Could you tell if the lockups were in the VM software, or in the guest OS? I assume/hope the lockups weren't on the host OS!?! (i.e. requires a real reboot to recover) Was the underlying host hardware SCSI as well or IDE? Cheers, BrettSh On Mon, 20 Dec 2004, Bernard, Aric wrote: > Noah, > > Just as a point of comparison, I have two Exchange 2003 Servers running > in VMs as well as some domain controllers. Originally they ran under > VMWare GSX for about 9 months and now under VS2005 for about 6 months. > The only problems I have ever had (aside from performance) occurred > during the move from GSX to VS2005. Originally I had set up the VS2005 > systems with Virtual SCSI disks, per the white paper. Unfortunately I > experienced VM lockups a dozen times during the first week. In the > troubleshooting effort I switched to Virtual IDE disks and have not had > a problem since. > > Regards, > > Aric > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Noah Eiger > Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 8:20 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: RE: Exchange in VM (was RE: [ActiveDir] Running DCs in Virtual > Se rver 2005 - whitepaper) > > I believe the disks are fixed size. (I will check when I get to the > office) > I will also look a the logs to see the specific errors. > > Brett, does that mean that defragging the underlying OS will have little > impact on the virtual environment? Should I defrag the virtual disks > from > within the virtual machine? And, does anyone know if the 3rd part tools > are > supported in the virtual environment? > > -- nme > > -----Original Message----- > From: Myrick, Todd (NIH/CIT) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 3:34 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: RE: Exchange in VM (was RE: [ActiveDir] Running DCs in Virtual > Se > rver 2005 - whitepaper) > > Man this sucks, I didn't know this White Paper existed. I have been > working > on documenting AD on VM's for both VS2005 and VMware ESX. > > You might be experiencing the fragmentation due to using the feature > that > dynamically expands the volume as it uses disk space. You might try > just > mapping raw disk space. > > Todd > > -----Original Message----- > From: Brett Shirley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 9:38 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: RE: Exchange in VM (was RE: [ActiveDir] Running DCs in Virtual > Server 2005 - whitepaper) > > Noah, > > You've piqued my curiousity ... > > What VM software were you using? > > Did you "hard" reboot the VMs? > > You were experiencing actual corruption issues? I guess I'm a little > skeptical. > > Do you remember the nature of the corruptions? Were there AD JET level > recovery issues? If you still have any of the event logs, I'd be > curious > to know what JET and AD events you felt indicated corruption, and the > cause of the non-booting DC, get this via event log in DSRM (DS Restore > Mode). > > I ask, because correctness (i.e. no corruption) should not be sacraficed > b/c the underlying host has a fragmented FS. It should just be slow ... > > Cheers, > Brett Shirley > Dev > > Wooo hoo, I happened upon the actual thingy I'm supposed to put at the > bottom of my mail! Here: > This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers > no > rights. > > > On Sat, 18 Dec 2004, Noah Eiger wrote: > > > A little bit of a tangent: I had built an entire virtual network with > DCs > > and an Exchange server. I started getting tons of serious corruption > errors > > in the logs and soon DC2 would just not boot. It turns out that the > host > > machine was horribly fragmented. > > > > Is the presence of Exchange a likely culprit? If so, is the solution > to > run > > Exchange on a physical box patched in via a physical extension of that > > virtual network? > > > > -- nme > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 1:44 PM > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: RE: Exchange in VM (was RE: [ActiveDir] Running DCs in > Virtual > > Server 2005 - whitepaper) > > > > It's not support in any emulated environment. > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Lynch > > Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 3:14 PM > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: RE: Exchange in VM (was RE: [ActiveDir] Running DCs in > Virtual > > Server 2005 - whitepaper) > > > > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > Hash: SHA1 > > > > Because VS2005 wasn't designed for intensive I/O, CPU or RAM systems. > > VS2005 has on average a 35-45% overhead on the host machine, because > of > > the Host OS. Also, all VM's are running in Emulated Mode on the CPU. > > VMware would be better suited for your need of Exchange running within > a > > VM. > > > > VS2005 doesn't offer the same performance enhancements VMware ESX > server > > can, and GSX server for that matter. Ok, GSX doesn't offer CPU > resource > > throttling, like VS2005. But, I would rather spend the extra money > for > > GSX, and have a more stable virtualization platform than VS/VPC 2005. > > > > Chris > > > > > > > > > > > > List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm > > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm > > List archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ > > > > List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm > List archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ > List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm > List archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ > > > > List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm > List archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ > List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm > List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ > List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
