[PVE-User] Windows sever 2016 vm with very high ram usage

[Arjen]

On Monday, March 29th, 2021 at 15:37, Leandro Roggerone <leandro at tecnetmza.com.ar> wrote:

> Hi guys , thanks for your words , have some feedback:
> 

> Maybe Proxmox cannot look inside the VM for the actual memory usage because
> 

> the VirtIO balloon driver is not installed or active? Or maybe the other
> 

> 90% is in use as Windows file cache?
> 

> I think so ...
> 

> Dont know about windows file cache ...
> 

> Have you installed the VirtIO drivers for Windows? Are you assigning too
> 

> many vCPUs or memory? Can you share the VM configuration file? Can you tell
> 

> us something about your Proxmox hardware and version?
> 

> No , I have not ... now you mentioned im reading about VirtIO , I will try
> 

> to install and let you know how it goes
> 

> Should install it no my pve box or directly inside windows vm ?
> 

> I'm assigning max vCPUs abailables (24 , 4 sockets 6 cores) and 32gb for
> 

> memory.
> 

> (I really don't know about any criteria to assign vcpus)
> 

> This is VM config file:
> 

> root at pve:~# cat /etc/pve/nodes/pve/qemu-server/107.conf
> 

> bootdisk: ide0
> 

> cores: 6
> 

> ide0: local-lvm:vm-107-disk-0,size=150G
> 

> ide1: local-lvm:vm-107-disk-1,size=350G
> 

> ide2:
> 

> local:iso/Windows_Server_2016_Datacenter_EVAL_en-us_14393_refresh.ISO,media=cdrom,size=6808810K
> 

> memory: 32768
> 

> name: KAIKENII
> 

> net0: e1000=1A:F1:10:BF:92:0A,bridge=vmbr3,firewall=1
> 

> numa: 0
> 

> ostype: win10
> 

> scsihw: virtio-scsi-pci
> 

> smbios1: uuid=daf8f767-59c7-4e87-b3be-75d4a8020c38
> 

> sockets: 4
> 

> vmgenid: a7634624-1230-4a3e-9e7c-255d32ad2030
> 

> My PVE is:
> 

> CPU(s) 24 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5680 @ 3.33GHz (2 Sockets)
> 

> Kernel Version Linux 5.0.15-1-pve #1 SMP PVE 5.0.15-1 (Wed, 03 Jul 2019
> 

> 10:51:57 +0200)
> 

> PVE Manager Version pve-manager/6.0-4/2a719255
> 

> Total Mem = 64GB.
> 

> That's all.
> 

> Thanks

You are using emulated IDE drives, which is very slow. Please install the VirtIO SCSI driver for Windows inside the VM and attach the disk with (vitual) scsi instead of ide. You might need to reinstall Windows to make it boot. Use the VirtIO virtual floppy to install the VirtIO SCSI driver when starting the Windows installation setup inside the VM.

Use as little virtual cores and as little memory as is needed (or just a little more), this makes the VM run more smoothly. You systems has two sockets, so you might want to enable NUMA in the VM configuration, otherwise your VM memory access has to go to the other socket often, which is slow. Using just the cores from one of your CPU's (or less) will perform better than using all for the same reason of less communication between physical sockets.

Currently, you have chosen all the slowest options to run this VM on your kind of system. Each of the steps above will increase performance. The VirtIO driver installation is the most work, but also gives the most performance increase. Selecting 'host' instead of kvm64 will also improve performance.

kind regards, Arjen

> El vie, 26 mar 2021 a las 11:40, Arjen via pve-user (<
> 

> pve-user at lists.proxmox.com>) escribió:
> 

> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > 

> > From: Arjen leesteken at protonmail.ch
> > 

> > To: Proxmox VE user list pve-user at lists.proxmox.com
> > 

> > Cc:
> > 

> > Bcc:
> > 

> > Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2021 14:39:13 +0000
> > 

> > Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Windows sever 2016 vm with very high ram usage
> > 

> > On Friday, March 26th, 2021 at 15:28, Leandro Roggerone <
> > 

> > leandro at tecnetmza.com.ar> wrote:
> > 

> > > Hi guys , Just wanted to share this with you.
> > 

> > > After creating a VM for a windows sever 2016 with 32 GB ram I can
> > 

> > > see continuos high memory usage (about 99-100%).
> > 

> > > I have no running task , since it is a fresh server and from task manager
> > 

> > > can see a 10% of memory usage.
> > 

> > > Regarding those confusing differences, server performance is very bad.
> > 

> > Maybe Proxmox cannot look inside the VM for the actual memory usage
> > 

> > because the VirtIO balloon driver is not installed or active? Or maybe the
> > 

> > other 90% is in use as Windows file cache?
> > 

> > > User experience is very poor with a non fluent user interface.
> > 

> > > Is there something to do / check to improve this ?
> > 

> > Have you installed the VirtIO drivers for Windows? Are you assigning too
> > 

> > many vCPUs or memory? Can you share the VM configuration file? Can you tell
> > 

> > us something about your Proxmox hardware and version?
> > 

> > > Any advice would be welcome.
> > 

> > Maybe search the forum for similar Windows performance questions?
> > 

> > https://forum.proxmox.com/forums/proxmox-ve-installation-and-configuration.16/
> > 

> > > Thanks.
> > 

> > best of luck, Arjen
> > 

> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > 

> > From: Arjen via pve-user pve-user at lists.proxmox.com
> > 

> > To: Proxmox VE user list pve-user at lists.proxmox.com
> > 

> > Cc: Arjen leesteken at protonmail.ch
> > 

> > Bcc:
> > 

> > Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2021 14:39:13 +0000
> > 

> > Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Windows sever 2016 vm with very high ram usage
> > 

> > pve-user mailing list
> > 

> > pve-user at lists.proxmox.com
> > 

> > https://lists.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user
> 

> pve-user mailing list
> 

> pve-user at lists.proxmox.com
> 

> https://lists.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 509 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.proxmox.com/pipermail/pve-user/attachments/20210329/50a72858/attachment.sig>