Ubuntu 18.04 VM nested in Windows Server Azure VM
Posted: 6. May 2021, 23:13
My company distributes a local web application that runs on an Ubuntu VM. For our VBox deployment, we normally require that clients have a physical server as the host.
One of our clients has their whole network running on Azure and their IT opted to try installing our VM inside of their Azure Windows Server VM. The nested Ubuntu VM showed some performance issues, including a very slow boot up and high CPU usage on the host. Most of the time it runs well enough for them to use our application, but sometimes the Ubuntu VM is slow to the point of being unusable and takes up almost 100% of the host CPU. A reboot of their Window Server VM normally resolves this but sometimes it does not.
I know nested virtualization is not supported by VirtualBox or recommended, but I'm wondering if anyone has tried running VirtualBox inside of an Azure VM. I'd like to know if there's anything we can do to mitigate these performance issues and make the Ubuntu VM run more reliably?
The client doesn't want to fork up any costs to accommodate one of our standard deployments, but they're also frustrated by these unpredictable issues. So we're in a bit of a tight spot.
I've attached the log files. The hardening log was too big so I've split it up. If anyone has suggestions those would be much appreciated!
The Windows Server VM is running an Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8171M CPU @ 2.60GHz with 2 cores. We've tried running the Ubuntu VM with 1 and 2 cores - neither option seems to improve the performance when it's running slowly.
One of our clients has their whole network running on Azure and their IT opted to try installing our VM inside of their Azure Windows Server VM. The nested Ubuntu VM showed some performance issues, including a very slow boot up and high CPU usage on the host. Most of the time it runs well enough for them to use our application, but sometimes the Ubuntu VM is slow to the point of being unusable and takes up almost 100% of the host CPU. A reboot of their Window Server VM normally resolves this but sometimes it does not.
I know nested virtualization is not supported by VirtualBox or recommended, but I'm wondering if anyone has tried running VirtualBox inside of an Azure VM. I'd like to know if there's anything we can do to mitigate these performance issues and make the Ubuntu VM run more reliably?
The client doesn't want to fork up any costs to accommodate one of our standard deployments, but they're also frustrated by these unpredictable issues. So we're in a bit of a tight spot.
I've attached the log files. The hardening log was too big so I've split it up. If anyone has suggestions those would be much appreciated!
The Windows Server VM is running an Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8171M CPU @ 2.60GHz with 2 cores. We've tried running the Ubuntu VM with 1 and 2 cores - neither option seems to improve the performance when it's running slowly.