Slow Server boot on ESXi 4

[spazman]

I have an IBM x3400 with 32GB RAM, 413 GB SCSI RAID 5 array, on 15K RPM drives, Dual Xeon 1.86 with four cores each. The Array is divided into two one for ESXi and later ESX at 40 GB, and the rest is for VM storage.

I have VMWeare ESXi running. 2 VM's
One is a DC with 2 GB RAM, 40 GB HDD, 1 CPU
The other is a TS with 24GB RAM, 40 and 230 GB HDD, 4 CPU's, 230 GB HDD was thin provisioned.
Right now there is no load, the systyem has not gone into production.

The TS is very slow to start.

One thing to mention, the VM's (VMDK and all supporting files) were both downloaded to a Windows machine and then Back to the VM server using the tools in vSpere client. This was done to rebuild the array. The DC starts up fine. So I don't think is a fragmentation of the VMDK.

I have reduced the server to one CPU no change. I have not reduced the RAM.

Any ideas as to why it takes upto 9 minutes to boot? Login at applying settings is also a little slugish.

 

[baddos]

When you say 9 minutes to boot, how long until the actual GUI loads on windows where it goes into VGA mode? It could be something non-related to your VMWARE like the group policy timing out or something.

 

[spazman]

It's nine minutes to the time Windows 2003 start to the time I can hit CTRL + ALT + DEL

 

[baddos]

Ok, how long until it starts up into VGA mode? I.E. you get a colored screen with a mouse cursor.

 

[spazman]

That is about half of the time.

 

[baddos]

Any errors in the windows system or application logs?
When you boot this TS server are you also booting the DC as well?
Is there more than 1 dc in the domain?

I'm wondering if the TS is booting before the domain controllers or has incorrect DNS servers assigned on it's network interface that would have it take a long time to check group policies settings.

 

[spazman]

The DC is up all the time. I realize the slow computer setting snad login are DC related. My concern is the slow startup prior to that. After posting this I realized the yes the slow applying setting is GPO related.

But the 4-5 minutes for Windows 2003 pre VGA screen is the issue.

 

[spazman]

Okay so an FYI out there for anyone.

In the process of creating threse two VM, the VMDK were copied to a local drive on a system, running the vSphere client. so we could revuild the Storage Array. They were then copies back and added into inventory, all with vSphere client.

Well one VMDK, the C: of the TS server must have got severly fragmented. So I created a new folder on storage array, copied the VMDK to a new folder, of course VMFS created the whole file, I deleted the file in the actiual VM folder and copied it back.

Boot time went form 9+ minutes to just under two.