We recently made a Windows 2012 server VM on our ESXi5.1 Cluster, with FC Datastores on FAS3210 with BSAS 1.6 TB disks 7200rpm (our SLOW disks). and it performs very bad
To resolve this problem we had te relocate the VM to the other aggr with SAS 500GB 10000rpf (out FAST disks).
Alle other VM's running on the SLOW disks have no performance problems, only windows 2012. The other VM's consist of mostly windows 2008R2 servers.
The creation of the Datastore on boths filers (SLOW and FAST) was identical and like this:
created a flexvol on the aggr of 525GB
created a lun of 500GB on that flexvol and assigned the initiater group from the VMware ESXi5.1 cluster where the new windows 2012 server would run.
we used thin provisioning where possible
on the VCentre server we had the clusterservers do a rescan for new devices, created a new datastore on the discoverd device and let VMware format the disks as VMFS5.54
then we created a brand new windows 2012 VM on that datastore, using a 40GB c: and 400Gb d: drive. again with thin provisioning
the installation had no issies.
But logging in on the console and just using windows was verry irritating.
after installing Sharepoint 2013 thing were even worse, resulting in typing en watching the letter appear on by one in windows.
To see where the sluggishness came from we tried several scenarios, and only vmotioning the server to a identical volume on the FAST disk resulted in a GOOD performing server.
The windows 2012 server remaind the same: the VMware servers did not change, the same initiators were used. Only the DATASTORE was connected to FAST disk instead of the SLOW disk.
doing the same with windows 2008R2, with identical hardware assignments and the same SLOW and FAST disk assignments in this test gave a GOOD performing server on BOTH SLOW and FAST disk
de filers are like this:
Filer 1 and filer 2 in HA mode
NetApp Release 8.1.1 7-Mode
Filer 1 has 24 disks SAS 546.88GB 10000RPM
Aggr is a raid_dp with one Spare disk
Filer 2 has 12 disks BSAS 1,62TB 7200RPM
Aggr is a raid_dp with one Spare disk
Has anyone seen the same slow performance on BSAS disk for windows 2012?
I have searched on google and havent found any conclusive articles
Any thoughts? I do not want my test servers using FAST disks...
regards Fons