Labbing using Hyper-V

Hi all.

I've installed Hyper-V on my computer (Windows 10, i3, 16GB RAM only one local disk 2TB) and have been trying to lab some scenarios and have been having the worst luck. Out of the blue, random VMs will start chewing up 100% disk time and reboots of the VM doesn't help. If I delete the VM and recreate it, the problem goes away. Until some other VM starts showing the same symptoms. Also, I can't seem to install a domain controller in an existing forest on a server core installation. I've tried it twice (once installing DNS before the promotion) and it always hangs on Creating the NTDS Settings object for this Active Directory.. blah blah blah. All of the checks passed.

That being said...

This is the first time I've tried labbing Server 2012R2 in Hyper-V on Windows 10. I've always used VirtualBox in the past on Windows 7.

Any ideas other than trying VirtualBox?

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poolmanjim

Have you run a chkdsk or HDTune on your harddrive. The weirdness of what you're seeing is leading me to think that your drive may have some issues.

Another drive thing, it could just be that you have a slow spindle speed on your drive (5400rpm vs 7200) and that could be slow enough that between Windows 10 and everything else, its chewing your disk up?

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling Hyper-V on your system?

FillAwful

poolmanjim wrote: »

Have you run a chkdsk or HDTune on your harddrive. The weirdness of what you're seeing is leading me to think that your drive may have some issues.

Another drive thing, it could just be that you have a slow spindle speed on your drive (5400rpm vs 7200) and that could be slow enough that between Windows 10 and everything else, its chewing your disk up?

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling Hyper-V on your system?

Agree with above. Moving to a solid state drive did wonders for my virtual labs. I can run 4 or 5 VM's without issues, i7 16GB Ram. I would consider moving to a solid state drive if you can.

Dojiscalper

I've had several friends say that moving to SSDs fixed lots of their Windows 10 issues. So far I haven't had issues on my old drives.

AvgITGeek

Thanks for the replys! No money to invest in SSD at the moment. Just bought a house several months ago so most extra money is going into that.

I'll run a scan on the HDD and report back. Worst case scenario is I keep Hyper-V around to lab the Hyper-V requirements and use Virtual Box for everything else.

AvgITGeek

Disk checked out OK.

So how many of you have been labbing on a Windows 10 computer with Hyper-V Installed with Server 2012R2 guests? If you haven't, don't respond. Sorry but I'm trying to narrow this issue down to either a OS or Hypervisor issue. Sorry to sound like an a-hole but I'd like to figure this out. The disk usage by random VM's is the least of my concerns. The fact the I can verify connectivity to my DC and all of the prerequisites complete and then ServerCore system hangs...

netsysllc

A single standard hard drive will no be able to handle the DISK IO with any kind of usable performance. You need a SSD drive for decent performance. You should be using hyper-v because you will need to understand it to lab properly, it is a core part of windows Server and they will want to test you on it. Using virtualbox will not give you this knowledge. Not to mention virtualbox will not do anything for your performance issues.

Mike7

Make sure you are not running VirtualBox or VMware with HyperV at the same time. If running antivirus, add exclusion to your HyperV folders.

I tried Hyper-V on my Windows 10 and did not like it due to Microsoft lack of support for more Linux variants. I am using commercial VMware workstation. Alternatively, you can try free VMware player.

AndersonSmith

poolmanjim wrote: »

Have you run a chkdsk or HDTune on your harddrive. The weirdness of what you're seeing is leading me to think that your drive may have some issues.

Another drive thing, it could just be that you have a slow spindle speed on your drive (5400rpm vs 7200) and that could be slow enough that between Windows 10 and everything else, its chewing your disk up?

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling Hyper-V on your system?

Great response Poolmanjim! I used an SSD for my labs and it was amazing

Louie1277

I have to agree using a external SSD drive is best. I have all my machines on that plus I run vmware. That way it doesn't take up so much space on my mac and stuff.

AvgITGeek

Solved.

Made all disks fixed and Hyper-V and my system is happy. For some reason, dynamic discs would piss things off.
Regarding the hanging on domain join: This is common practice in lag environments to have all administrator passwords the same. Hope this link helps you:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2737935

AvgITGeek

If you have enabled the Hyper-V feature and install Virtual-Box you will only be able to access 32 bit OS.
FYI

Ugly-051

AvgITGeek wrote: »

Hi all.

I've installed Hyper-V on my computer (Windows 10, i3, 16GB RAM only one local disk 2TB) and have been trying to lab some scenarios and have been having the worst luck. Out of the blue, random VMs will start chewing up 100% disk time and reboots of the VM doesn't help. If I delete the VM and recreate it, the problem goes away. Until some other VM starts showing the same symptoms. Also, I can't seem to install a domain controller in an existing forest on a server core installation. I've tried it twice (once installing DNS before the promotion) and it always hangs on Creating the NTDS Settings object for this Active Directory.. blah blah blah. All of the checks passed.

That being said...

This is the first time I've tried labbing Server 2012R2 in Hyper-V on Windows 10. I've always used VirtualBox in the past on Windows 7.

Any ideas other than trying VirtualBox?

Have you had a look at the VMs themselves and checked their disk I/O either using Procmon or perfmon?

I’ve never really had any issues with any virtual labs.

I use Hyper-V on Windows 10 (3.5GHZ Core i7 3770k 8GB RAM) and I virtualise the network that Hyper-V sits on using GNS3. This allows me to emulate (on a smaller scale) real-world network topologies, internal and external.

My host (W10) has a 1TB 7k SATA 3 disk with a system 250GB Samsung Evo SSD disk, so plenty of speed and power.

I’m going to add in another 8GB of DDR3 RAM so I can run more VMs at once.

I used to use VMWare workstation and the odd bit of VBOX but I find Hyper-V better and more efficient since it’s emended into the O/S.

Some other types of VMs I run require QEMU or VBOX.