Windows Small Business Server 2008 on Proxmox

[querformatik]

Hi all,

I'm using Proxmox to virtualize different Windows machines. The Windows 7 machine is working quite fine. But the Windows Small Bussines Server 2008 (64bit) machine is making some troubles.

There are two different problems:

1. Sometimes the machine starts eating up all CPU (100%-110% CPU usage shown on Proxmox interface) for alle the time. When this problem occurs I can't connect through RDP to the Windows machine and if I try to connect through Java console to the server I only see the lock-screen and no inputs are processed (even if I wait 15-30 minutes).
   As the Windows event viewer doesn't show up any event during the period when the machine eats up all CPU I wrate a batch script to write the whole task list every minute into a log file. But actually that script isn't processed when the CPU usage is that high. So I don't know the reason for the high CPU load. Do you have any suggestions how I can locate this problem?
2. From time to time the machine resets itself and restarts. But after doing the restart it gets resetted again and makes another restart. This happens until I log on to the machine using Proxmox Java console. Then the machine isn't resetted after next restart. Afterwards I can log on and everything is working fine for several days/weeks. First I thought it might be a blue screen but actually I disabled the restarts after blue screens. Do you have a hint how I could locate the problem?

I already switched network from Intel to Virtio, disks from IDE to virtio, CPU from multicore to singlecore, ... But that didn't solve the problem.

Some informations about the hostsystem:

CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1220
Memory: 32GB
Storage: local LVM storage

pveversion -v

proxmox-ve-2.6.32: 3.1-113 (running kernel: 2.6.32-25-pve)
pve-manager: 3.1-17 (running version: 3.1-17/eb90521d)
pve-kernel-2.6.32-20-pve: 2.6.32-100
pve-kernel-2.6.32-25-pve: 2.6.32-113
pve-kernel-2.6.32-23-pve: 2.6.32-109
lvm2: 2.02.98-pve4
clvm: 2.02.98-pve4
corosync-pve: 1.4.5-1
openais-pve: 1.1.4-3
libqb0: 0.11.1-2
redhat-cluster-pve: 3.2.0-2
resource-agents-pve: 3.9.2-4
fence-agents-pve: 4.0.0-2
pve-cluster: 3.0-7
qemu-server: 3.1-5
pve-firmware: 1.0-23
libpve-common-perl: 3.0-6
libpve-access-control: 3.0-6
libpve-storage-perl: 3.0-13
pve-libspice-server1: 0.12.4-2
vncterm: 1.1-4
vzctl: 4.0-1pve3
vzprocps: 2.0.11-2
vzquota: 3.1-2
pve-qemu-kvm: 1.4-17
ksm-control-daemon: 1.1-1
glusterfs-client: 3.4.0-2

cat /etc/pve/qemu-server/100.conf

#Windows Small Business Server 2008 (64bit)
boot: cdn
bootdisk: virtio0
cores: 1
ide2: none,media=cdrom
memory: 16384
name: server1
net0: virtio=00:08:54:54:DF:D9,bridge=vmbr0
onboot: 1
ostype: w2k8
sockets: 1
startup: down=360
usb0: host=0a0e:0029
virtio0: data1:vm-100-disk-1,size=940G
virtio1: swap:vm-100-disk-1,size=32G

 

[hotwired007]

If you are having issues without virtio - the odds are they wont go away with virtio devices - have you tried disabling memory ballooning? what is the USB device you have configured?

 

[querformatik]

memory ballooning: I haven't installed the ballooning driver on my windows host and I have configured a fixed amount of memory for the windows machine. So I think memory ballooning isn't active for this machine.

The USB device is the telephone system. This connection is used to get informations about incoming calls and to be able to dial through Outlook. I also thought this USB device might be the problem. But actually I disabled it for a couple of weeks and the problem was still there. So the USB device shouldn't be a problem.

 

[spirit]

maybe can you test to stop some services ?. (I think windows smallbusiness come with exchange and sqlserver for example ?)

 

[querformatik]

Yes the Small Business Server comes with Exchange and SQL-Server. But actually this feature are used. So I can't just deactivate these features for several days/weeks. Isn't there an option to analyze the memory of an virtualized machine?