VM Guest will not use more than 1 GB ram

[petersb]

Hi all,

I have a ML370 with 8GB ram installed. I am running just one Guest which is running Small buesiness Server 2000. The guest runs fine with 1GB of ram however it seems any higher than that and the server runs very slow. I am talking twice the time to boot and very slow response once logged on. CPU wise the vm host is doing nothing. It all seems to be related to disk access. Even the host repsonds slowly, i guess due to the disk access. The host is configured with 3 140gb in raid 5. I relaise i've made a mistake to put the host OS and vm on the same disk but i dont think this is causing my issue. I think the root cause is due to the guest accessing disk so much with the extra 1 gig of ram. I have put another vm on the same box configured with 2GB and it runs fine.

Appreciate any advice.

 

[mrdenny]

What version of VMware are you running (ESX, Server, etc)?

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Configuration / Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Configuration)
MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005) / Database Developer (SQL 2005)

My Blog

 

[TheLad]

Are the pagefile settings of the VM that works ok and the VM that does not work ok different?

--------------------------------------
"Insert funny comment in here!"
--------------------------------------

 

[petersb]

The VM Server version is 1.0.2

In relation to page file. On both it was set to be on the system drive (c I thought that this could be the issue so i created another virtual disk on another physical drive and moved the pagefile there. No improvement at all.

Regards

 

[mrdenny]

I'd start by opening perfmon and seeing exactly what is causing the disk IO issues (via the guest OS). Check which disk is getting hammered, and see which process is hitting the disk. You may need to reduce the page file.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Configuration / Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Configuration)
MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005) / Database Developer (SQL 2005)

My Blog