Slow VM's on TrueNAS SCALE

[WikingDK]

Hi there.
So I'm quite a novice at TrueNAS SCALE, but not in virtual servers.
I have TrueNAS i just build, following specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
RAM: 48GB
Motherboard: MSI Tomahawk b450 MAX (Running the newest BIOS)
SSD: 2x1TB WD Red in RAID1.

As I'm quite new in TrueNAS, i created a VM just for testing, and the VM is extreamly slow.
So, i seached the net, and found drivers for VirtIO, and changed drives and NIC to VirtIO.
Also i tried with and without CPU "Host Passthru".

But the VM is still sluggish.
The VM is Windows 10, i tried diffrent CPU configurations with CPU's, threads and threds, same issues.
6G RAM, not using all of it.

In the VM, i see that task manager uses nearly 100% CPU on all cores at the same time.
So i went to the dashboard, and i find that CPU core 4 is at 100%, all other cores are practicaly at zero.
I started Googling the "Only one CPU used" and found many issues with older Intel server CPU's that had a limit.

Can anyone here give input, on what I'm missing?

 

[WikingDK]

I forgot to attach photos of the CPU usage, i think it looks weird.

 

[sretalla]

What are the settings for the VM? CPUs, Cores, Threads?

 

[WikingDK]

What are the settings for the VM? CPUs, Cores, Threads?

Hi Sretalla.
As I wrote, i have tried a lot of diffrent configurations. But my current settings is CPU 2, cores 2 and threds 2.

50GB SSD drive.
And 8GB RAM.

There is also running a pihole. But that is all running on the machine.

Jens.

 

[sretalla]

CPU 2, cores 2 and threds 2

OK, but you see that this makes 8 threads right?

It's usually not good to use more than 1 CPU.

2 cores and 2 threads would mean 4 threads in total and that's probably a good place to start from to see if things work well.

 

[WikingDK]

OK, but you see that this makes 8 threads right?

It's usually not good to use more than 1 CPU.

2 cores and 2 threads would mean 4 threads in total and that's probably a good place to start from to see if things work well.

Yehar i know.
And i have tried a lot of other configs.

OK, but you see that this makes 8 threads right?

It's usually not good to use more than 1 CPU.

2 cores and 2 threads would mean 4 threads in total and that's probably a good place to start from to see if things work well.

Aaaaah, i found it!

The option for "Optional: CPU Set (Examples: 0-3,8-11)" i had set it to 4, and when doing that you only allow it running on CPU 4.
When i press the questionmark to see what the option is, it doesent show my any info, so a Google of that option. Bingo.
I now have a speed monster!

 

[sfatula]

The other thing that accelerated my Windows 10 VM is hyper-v enlightenments turned on.

I use this guide for pinning:

CPU Pinning Helper

 

[WikingDK]

The other thing that accelerated my Windows 1-0 VM is hyper-v enlightenments turned on.

I use this guide for pinning:

CPU Pinning Helper

Thank you, i will take a look at it.

 

[lesserthere]

Yehar i know.
And i have tried a lot of other configs.

Aaaaah, i found it!

The option for "Optional: CPU Set (Examples: 0-3,8-11)" i had set it to 4, and when doing that you only allow it running on CPU 4.
When i press the questionmark to see what the option is, it doesent show my any info, so a Google of that option. Bingo.
I now have a speed monster!

I might just try Scale again on bare metal and spin up windows. I gave up and had results just as you described. Ended up with scale on proxmox and windows vm on proxmox all working great.
I have a spare dell i7 7700 I will try again with your tips. My main server I wanted to put it on is an amd ryzen 3400g with 64gb ram, asrock B550 pro-4 mobo

Here no? You just populated it with '4'?

Thanks

 

[WikingDK]

I might just try Scale again on bare metal and spin up windows. I gave up and had results just as you described. Ended up with scale on proxmox and windows vm on proxmox all working great.
I have a spare dell i7 7700 I will try again with your tips. My main server I wanted to put it on is an amd ryzen 3400g with 64gb ram, asrock B550 pro-4 mobo

Here no? You just populated it with '4'?

View attachment 69390
Thanks

Yes there. With the number 4 it obly uges that one core!

Jens.

 

[lesserthere]

Yes there. With the number 4 it obly uges that one core!

Jens.

great I'll give it another shot thanks. I run blueiris on the windows. It is running all ok on proxmox right now but with truenas scale as a vm also, and received a lot of criticism for doing this.

 

[lesserthere]

If I set cpu set to just '4' this is pegged at 100% at start up then settles down with 2/2/2 also.
Will experiment

 

[lesserthere]

What would be a good config in terms of vcpu, cores and threads here?
Still a lot more lag and cpu usage than on proxmox with a very light version in terms of resources assigned

 

[lesserthere]

Made improvements and cpu usage is much lower now.
Disabled a lot windows services like the defender scanning the C drive and some of the firewall settings, Cleaned it out as much as I could and appears to run better now

 

[neofusion]

Hi there.
So I'm quite a novice at TrueNAS SCALE, but not in virtual servers.
I have TrueNAS i just build, following specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
RAM: 48GB
Motherboard: MSI Tomahawk b450 MAX (Running the newest BIOS)
SSD: 2x1TB WD Red in RAID1.

As I'm quite new in TrueNAS, i created a VM just for testing, and the VM is extreamly slow.
So, i seached the net, and found drivers for VirtIO, and changed drives and NIC to VirtIO.
Also i tried with and without CPU "Host Passthru".

But the VM is still sluggish.
The VM is Windows 10, i tried diffrent CPU configurations with CPU's, threads and threds, same issues.
6G RAM, not using all of it.

In the VM, i see that task manager uses nearly 100% CPU on all cores at the same time.
So i went to the dashboard, and i find that CPU core 4 is at 100%, all other cores are practicaly at zero.
I started Googling the "Only one CPU used" and found many issues with older Intel server CPU's that had a limit.

Can anyone here give input, on what I'm missing?

Running TrueNAS on drives in a hardware RAID configuration (RAID1) is not recommended.

 

[sfatula]

Running TrueNAS on drives in a hardware RAID configuration (RAID1) is not recommended.

He probably used the term "raid" to mean ZFS mirror. A lot of people here use the term RAID when describing zfs vdevs, which is not the same thing.

 

[lesserthere]

after moving to unraid I found the vms work sooo much better.
Span up a win 11 tiny with 4gb ram 1 core and is speedy compared to truenas.
Unraid has so many advantages over truenas for the home user.
Well worth the extra cost imho