Windows VM Slowness

[Mitch2004]

Hi All

I am running a windows server 2019 VM on my TrueNAS Scale machine (Specs at the bottom of the page). I recently upgraded from TrueNAS-SCALE-22.12.0.0 to TrueNAS-SCALE-22.12.3.3; since the update, I have noticed the speed of my VM has dropped significantly despite there being no greater activity or resource usage inside or out of the VM

Task manager within the VM shows it's barely even using 10% of the resources I have allocated (4 Cores, 8 Threads, 16GB RAM). I have searched the net and looked for anything that may be causing the issue, but I cannot find anything of use, and all tests I can think of running don't show much concern. Its just extremely sluggish (Roughly 6 - 10 seconds per action inside the VM and between 10 - 40 min to boot it )

The VM is set up using AHCI mode for the NIC and drives I have attached as per TrueNAS documentation. (https://www.truenas.com/docs/scale/scaletutorials/virtualization/creatingmanagingvmsscale/)
The VM is stored and runs on 6TB 7.2K SAS Drives, and I considered installing a single SSD and running the VM only from it but swapping the drive does not explain why it was working fine till the TrueNAS Scale OS update was installed.

Hardware Specs
Chassis: Dell PowerEdge R720XD
CPU: 1 x Intel Xeon E5-2650 V2
RAM: 64GB (4x16GB) PC3-14900R 2Rx4 ECC
Hard Drives: 12 x 6TB 7.2K Dell SAS Drives in Raid Z3
NIC: Dell Broadcom 5720 Quad port
Power Supply: 2 x 750W HS 80+

 

[sfatula]

Can you post screen captures of all the VM settings perhaps? Not much to go on. My Windows VM is actually running faster on 22.12.3.3. I am using virtio instead of ahci as that was better on ubuntu at least and it what I was used to, had no idea Truenas recommended AHCI. And I have just 6GB ram for Windows 10. My task manager shows far above 10%. I believe booting is < 1 minute, never timed it. Admittedly I have a 2698v3, but that's not going to make much difference. I have 2cpu, 4 cores, 2 threads.

But man, that's slow! Decent CPU too.

 

[Mitch2004]

Can you post screen captures of all the VM settings perhaps? Not much to go on. My Windows VM is actually running faster on 22.12.3.3. I am using virtio instead of ahci as that was better on ubuntu at least and it what I was used to, had no idea Truenas recommended AHCI. And I have just 6GB ram for Windows 10. My task manager shows far above 10%. I believe booting is < 1 minute, never timed it. Admittedly I have a 2698v3, but that's not going to make much difference. I have 2cpu, 4 cores, 2 threads.

But man, that's slow! Decent CPU too.

Hi sfatula
My apologies, I thought I had already uploaded some, Must have forgotten to upload them during posting -_-

Please see photos below

 

[sfatula]

The only difference in configuration between yours and mine are virtio vs ahci, and you have over provisioned your VM. 4 cores 8 threads is 32 host cpu threads, I think your CPU has 16 threads? Well, I do cpu pinning but it isn't going to make that much difference. I rebooted mine, took about 20 seconds to boot into Windows.

I would be curious about your graphic client, what are you using to use the GUI of Windows? VNC? Which one? On what machine? I'm using spice to my vm and it's much faster than vnc. My Windows VM is local.

 

[Mitch2004]

The only difference in configuration between yours and mine are virtio vs ahci, and you have over provisioned your VM. 4 cores 8 threads is 32 host cpu threads, I think your CPU has 16 threads? Well, I do cpu pinning but it isn't going to make that much difference. I rebooted mine, took about 20 seconds to boot into Windows.

I would be curious about your graphic client, what are you using to use the GUI of Windows? VNC? Which one? On what machine? I'm using spice to my vm and it's much faster than vnc. My Windows VM is local.

Hey sfatula

I am using both VNC for viewing the VM in TrueNAS and RDP from my workstation.

Not sure what has happened, but the VM does seem to be performing better than it was yesterday and is much more responsive.
I think I am just going to monitor this one a bit and see what happens; whatever its issue was seems to be clearing on its own

Cheers for your replies :)

 

[sfatula]

See if you can find a spice client. You might be surprised how fast it performs.