Yup, gives me a good picture.
You're I/O bound. SATA drives are simply getting more than they can handle.
Honestly, Virtualization is a great thing, but it _seriously_ stresses the
I/O subsystem. Then you've put all your stuff on the system drive, creating
additional load. And finally, to compound the problem, you've got 4k
clusters - I like something more on the order of 16k clusters or even larger
on VHD storage.
If you're going to use SATA drives, you've be FAR better off having more,
but smaller drives, configured in an array. I don't know what your physical
server looks like, but if you can put in an array of 6 or 8 smaller SATA (or
better yet, SAS) drives, you'll change the picture completely. To give you
an idea, here's how my main Hyper-V server is configured. (It's an HP
ML-350G5 with dual 5130 CPUs and a SmartArray P400 controller, plus an
additioanl Adaptec SAS controller.)
2 - 36 GB SAS drives - RAID-1 - C: drive, system
2 - 320 GB SATA drives - RAID-0 - D: drive - temporary, disposable storage.
ISOs, etc.
8 - 72 GB, 2.5", 15k SAS drives - RAID-5 - E: drive - my VHDs reside here.
Even that isn't perfect - I'd do better with RAID-10 for the VHD drive, but
it would mean swapping out the 72GB drives for 144's and the budget won't
handle that right now.
--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/xperts64 http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/charlie.russel
"Geb" <geb@_nospam.com> wrote in message
news:e1XnPNtBJHA.4172@xxxxxx
Quote:
> Charlie Russel - MVP wrote:
> Quote:
>> Sure sounds like it to me. What's your I/O subsystem look like on
>> that box? What's your disk fragmentation look like? Are you running a
>> nice, wide, array on high performance SAS disks? or a 3 disk RAID5 on
>> SATA?
>
>
> The ave disk queue length seems to be not pegging at 100 at the moment.
> It's going up and down wildly depending on what's going on the VMs.
>
> Fragmentation Info:
>
> Volume (C
> Volume size = 466 GB
> Cluster size = 4KB
> Used Space = 180 GB
> Free Space = 286 GB
> Percent free sp = 61 %
> Volume fragmentation
> Total fragmentation = 3%
> File framentation = 7%
> Free space fragmentation = %
> File Fragmentation
> Total files = 24,807
> Ave file size = 8 MB
> Total fragmented files = 229
> Total excess fragmenents = 4,462
> Ave fragements per file = 1.17
> Pagefile fragmentation
> Page file size = 2.00 GB
> Total fragements = 1
> Folder fragmentation
> Total folders = 2,666
> Fragmented folders = 3
> Excess folder fragements = 11
> Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
> Total MFT size = 27 MB
> MFT record count = 27,658
> Percent MFT in use = 98
> Total MFT fragements = 2
>
>
> I have 2 HP 500GB SATA non-hot plug 7,200 RPM 1" hard drives (mirrored)
> on a LSI Adapter, SAS 3000 series.
>
>
> Hope that gives you a clearer picture.
>
>
>
> --
>