Hi all. Let me present you with my training and learning project that I started for about 2 years ago. Because of the very limited budget, I had to configure my server manually. I checked the hardware compatibility list from VMware and started building. Now I know 8 Bg of ram is not much, but again, from my point of view, I will not be running heavy duty services on this ESX server. Two VMs will be constant running: the DC and vCenter servers, installed on Win 2008 Enterprise, running on 2Gb Ram each.
Other servers installed are Linux servers handling occassional emails and a virtual router/firewall to create a second virtual network with a sub net IP (192.168.2 / 192.168.3).
Something that has been bugging me from the start are the blank holes in the performance graphs. The blancs are consistent in all types of graphs (cpu, memory, disk, etc...) on ALL VMs. All on the same time line. They last from one minute to sometimes 2-3 minutes. I never gave it much though, as I was doing this on a learning platform, not for commercial purpose.
In January I installed a Win7 VM, 2 Gb Ram and used 2 vCPUs. I wanted to use this VM as a Home Media server. This would include transcoding and serving content not necesserally located on the same server. It is here I started to notice that the Home Media server would sometimes stutter or even freezes for 10-20 seconds. But strange enough the task manager on my VM shows not spikes when this happens, and is apparently working normal. The machine seems to be running smoothly. In the vCenter i see the same cpu and memory usage, but the graph is often breaking up with blanks. Difficult to say if this happens on the very same second. See attached file.
I tested with media stored both remote and on the same VM. Same problem. Even when I power down the Win7 box the drop out remain.
A second issue I sometimes have, and is maybe related to the previous one, is that the console for the VMs is not alway available. I click on the console tab, and get a black screen. I can click in the black area, do a ctrl-alt and click again, hit the enter button, nothing happens, and this on all VMs. "Unable to connect to the MKS: Timeout wile attempting reading will eventually show on the message line.
What could also be related is a cpu#0 stuck error on the Linux machine handling email. See attachment.
I have used countless hours of searching on the internet, to no avail. My last hope is on this forum. Hopefully someone can advise or assist me in trouble shouting this setup.
Best regards,
TheSatman