[pve-devel] Error in PVE with win2008r2 and 256GB RAM

[Cesar Peschiera]

Hi to PVE team developers

This is a new summary of a major problem between PVE, KVM and Win2008R2 SP1
VM.

Maybe i am doing something wrong, or maybe PVE or KVM need some corrections,
but i have done many test for get that the Win2008R2 SP1 works correctly
without successful, so that i would like consult about this to the PVE
developers

Summary of the problem:
-------------------------
When i turn on the Win2008R2 VM, the cpu go to the 100% in use for each
thread enabled in the VM, and when the VM is configured for example with 4GB
RAM, this VM works perfectly.

This is my Hardware setup:
---------------------------
- DELL poweredge R720 Server,
- Two processors Intel Xeon CPU E5-2690 v2 @ 3.00GHz., each processor has
10 cores and 20 threads (Hyperthreading),
- 256GB RAM. in performace mode

This is my Software setup:
--------------------------
- The Software is recently installed:
- PVE 3.3-5 (from his ISO and upgraded),
- Kernel: pve-kernel-2.6.32-34-pve,
- As VM: Win2008R2 SP1 using the 2 Intel processors and 248 GB RAM,
- VM without the use of tablet for pointer enabled in PVE (i use vmmouse of
VMware).

Here the symptoms and my actions performed:
-----------------------------------------------

1) Doing some tests, i have changed manually the size the page file of
Windows Server to 10 GB, and configured the VM with 62 GB. RAM (63488 MB.
RAM), now i can see that the Windows Server start with 100% of CPU, and
after of two minutes more or less, the processor returns to a normal state.

2) Seeing the task manager of Win2008R2 VM (while all cores and threads are
at 100%), i get this:
Image Name: System
User Name: System
CPU: 99%
memory (Private workspace): 52 KB
Description: NT Kernel & System

All other processes are consuming 0% of CPU


Here comes the more important information of side of PVE,
and other actions performed:
------------------------------------------------------------
3) In parallel to this strange behavior, htop on PVE is showing that the
process that consume a lot of processor is: "/usr/bin/kvm", this behavior is 
repetitive in all threads of processor that the VM has access.

4) In parallel to this strange behavior, while that the VM is configured
with 62GB RAM, htop on PVE is showing that the use of the memory is growing
in each second that elapses, and when his memory bar say that have used
"63964/257912MB", the consumption of threads of processors of this VM
returns to normal state. While that the VM has more RAM, the behavior is the
same, but the VM takes longer time to reach to a normal state.

5) As a second test, after of see all these behaviours, I log to Windows
Server, and htop show me a high consumption of many threads of processors
(+/- 50%), but after that the session was initiated, the consumption of
processors returns to normal state.

6) In htop, i see the same behaviour of consumption of processor while that
a session of windows is closing, i guess that any thing that i do in this VM
will consume processor resources extra needlessly.

7) Moreover, while that the task manager of Win2008R2 VM says that have +/-
60GB free, PVE in his tag "Summary" says exactly the conversely.

8) Trying to solve the problem, i did the suggestions without successful of
Mr. Spirit, according to this link:
http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/19309-Windows-KVM-frequent-restarts?p=99436#post99436

Maybe KVM or PVE have problems for manage lots RAM memory with numa enabled
in the bios of the Server, but in am not sure.
Only as a reference, i show this link:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=872524

I will be very grateful I will be very grateful to anyone that may help me.

Best regards
Cesar