Windows 10 Server VM running horribly slow after using up all space in data partition.

[gouthamravee]

I had 4 VMs and a single template on proxmox. A few days ago I realized that the 62GB of space for local-lvm was completely used up by these VMs. Two of the VMs, both running debian were showing io errors. One of the debian VMs seemed to be running fine. The other VM is a windows 10 server instance that simply will not act right.

I had problems connecting to the windows VM's desktop over proxmox and RDP. Usually I'd have to wait 5 - 10 minutes before anything would appear on either console or RDP, and most of the time when trying to login to the admin user on the windows server VM the connection would drop. The VM's only task is running plex server, kinda stuck with it because my RAID array is a windows storage spaces array. I am planning on getting rid of that and running plex server on a linux VM.

Anyways, I deleted one of the debian VMs and the template to get some space back. I'm also deleting things on the windows VM when ever the connection is stable enough to do so. I've already ordered a larger 480GB drive to put it over the weekend. But is this behavior being caused by something else?

I have about 10GB of free space on local-lvm now, but the windows VM is still acting horrible and I can't watch anything on plex. But I can watch things in my library through the SMB networked drives. Where should I start looking to troubleshoot this?

 

[LnxBil]

windows 10 server instance

What is that??? There is only windows 10 desktop os, that can only be virtualised on a hypervisor if you use enterprise licensing and there is windows server 2016 and windows server 2019.

I have about 10GB of free space on local-lvm now, but the windows VM is still acting horrible and I can't watch anything on plex. But I can watch things in my library through the SMB networked drives. Where should I start looking to troubleshoot this?

If it also suffered from "space problems", there can be a ton of things wrong with it. It is very hard to debug (if at all) and best is to restore from backup.

 

[gouthamravee]

What is that??? There is only windows 10 desktop os, that can only be virtualised on a hypervisor if you use enterprise licensing and there is windows server 2016 and windows server 2019.

I'm better than this, its server 2019.

If it also suffered from "space problems", there can be a ton of things wrong with it. It is very hard to debug (if at all) and best is to restore from backup.

Yup that's what I ended up doing, I was getting frustrated just waiting for the VM to respond to my input. Popped the ISO for server 2019 and reinstalled the OS.

Is this something I should expect from thin provisioned VM storage? This is the first time I've ever done that, I figured if the provisioned space ran out it would gracefully error out or something. I didn't expect it to cause all of my VMs to get screwed over. I thought the other linux VMs only had IO errors but it turned out to be worse. After a reboot of the proxmox server all of the linux VMs showed this error: The root filesystem requires a manual fsck.

All the VMs are fixed and running well enough. I also have a 480GB SSD that I'm going to use as the OS/Data drive for the server. I don't have enough open sata power ports right now to run a separate OS and VM storage right now.

 

[LnxBil]

If this is thin-provisioned LVM (as with any thin-provisioned storage), you have to be extra careful to not run out of space. Due to their sparsity and most likely snapshots, it is very hard to estimate space requirements. In desktop virtualisation products like VirtualBox etc., the VM is paused on space exhaustion, but this will not happen on PVE.

 

[gouthamravee]

If this is thin-provisioned LVM (as with any thin-provisioned storage), you have to be extra careful to not run out of space. Due to their sparsity and most likely snapshots, it is very hard to estimate space requirements. In desktop virtualisation products like VirtualBox etc., the VM is paused on space exhaustion, but this will not happen on PVE.

Good to know, thank you for the info. I'll keep this in mind as I move forward, going to move everything over to the 480GB drive today.