Virtualbox on Windows Server 2012 R2 host with 2012 guest

[bengallienne]

Hi,

I hope you guys can help. I'm trying to use Virtualbox on a Windows Server 2012 r2 server. Everything installs fine and some of my guests are running ok, but any guests I try to start that are Windows Server 2012 seem to have real issues. They take a very long time to start up (and this is a very powerful server), if they start up at all. I can't enable 3d mode on the graphics settings, and the guest regularly crashes and is pretty much unusable. I have Windows Server 2008 guests that seem fine, but these ones in particular are an issue.

Is there any reason I cannot run guests in this way? Is it incompatible to run a Server 2012 guest on a Server 2012 host? All the guests run fine on a windows 7 desktop machine, but we'd like to move them to our server if possible.

Thanks for any help in advance.

[socratis]

You need to focus at one guest at a time and provide the minimum information needed for assistance. Most important is the VBox.log (zipped) after a successful run.

[bengallienne]

No problem, and thanks for the reply.

Version is 4.3.6 r91406 and guest additions are installed. Attempting to run Windows Server 2012 guest on Windows Server 2012 R2 host.

Host System has 64Gb RAM, and is a 64bit operating system. Has two 6-core xeon processors

Guest system has 16Gb RAM assigned, and is a 64bit operating system, with 6 processors assigned

Let me know if you need any other info. The log is from a boot-up but could not shut down so had to switch off the guest by power off command.

Thanks!

[socratis]

The only thing that looked kinda suspicious was the fact that you have an old set of Guest Additions (4.2.16), but I don't think that it matters. But, I'm not an expert on reading the tea leaves yet. But I see what you mean about slow...

[Perryg]

Maybe I can add a few things to what I see.


File system of 'W:\VMs\SP2013Dev\sp2013dev-disk1.vmdk

• Are these guests transplants, or why the vmdk format?

00:00:01.608456 Drag'n'drop mode: Bidirectional

• Drag'n'drop is not going to work ( only works for Linux guests at the moment )

00:00:01.637450 NumCPUs <integer> = 0x0000000000000008 (8)

• I would turn this down to 2 or no more than 4

00:00:01.637460 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000400000000 (17 179 869 184, 16 GB)

• I would start with 8GB during the install. You can up it later.

00:00:02.540822 Logical host processors: 24 present, 24 max, 24 online, online mask: 0000000000ffffff
00:00:02.541002 Physical host cores: 12

• Remember that VirtualBox does not deal with threads (logical processors) only Physical processors.

00:00:30.564460 Guest Additions information report: Version 4.2.16 r86992 '4.2.16'

• This is going to cause issues. Install the 4.3.6 guest additions.

[bengallienne]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Unfortunately I have tried all the things mentioned below, and it doesn't seem to make any difference. Any other ideas? I've also spoken to the server provider to see if there is potentially something wrong with the machine itself.

The vmdk thing was because I tried exporting and then importing the machine to see if that helped but it didn't, it's back to running the original vdi now, with no change.

Currently a single VM takes 15 mins to boot up! (it takes about 30 seconds on a desktop machine)

[Perryg]

Only thing I can think of is Windows is looking for something and can't find it, thus taking a long time to time out before it fails and continues along its merry way. I know 2012 works as I have installed it, so I have to wonder what is different in your situation that is causing this. Is it VBox related or the way in which you are running it. You have beefy specs, well above enough for it to work. So let's look at the server. Is it running on metal or virtual? Is any other hypervisor installed on the server?


Note: Nested virtualization is not supported.

[bengallienne]

Yeah I looked at that, and I can't see anything obvious like missing device drivers or anything. Equally, even once the VM is up and running, it crawls along really slowly. (6 minutes to open the server manager dialog for example).

I completely agree that a Windows Server 2012 Guest does work, I have used the same VM on my windows 7 desktop (much lower spec), and it flies along quite happily.

With regard to the server, it is a physical machine, running a basic install of Windows Server 2012 R2. Hyper-v is not installed, and no other hypervisors are either, it is literally just a virtualbox machine. As you say the specs more than cover the requirements I am asking of it, so I guess the only other useful bit of information would be that it is running using two 2TB Seagate disks in RAID 1, using the built in RAID controller on the motherboard (A Supermicro X9DRD-iF). Could RAID be a potential issue here?

Thanks for all your help.

[Perryg]

I would first try to eliminate the configuration of the guest. Set the guest to minimal settings. 1 - 2 cpu 1024 - 2048 RAM, turn audio, 3d, usb2, off and add them back one at a time.
I would try without the net, but that one should really tick 2012 off and may take longer to boot. Actually depending on how the server was setup, how do you know it isn't a domain thing? Looking for the DC, or Etc..

[socratis]

Have you checked the guest's event viewer for any errors and/or warnings? That might worth taking a look at...

[bengallienne]

Thanks Perryg, looks like you are on to something.

In order to take anything I had installed on the VM out of the equation, and just check against the physical server itself, I made a new VM with just the base Windows Server 2012 installed. I removed everything you said and booted it up using a single processor and 4Gb RAM. It booted up and was ready to use in about 20 seconds!

Having added things back in slowly, I have found that turning on 3d acceleration causes all sorts of issues with the display (The server only has on board graphics, so guess I may need to get a graphics card for it?), and that if you change the number of processors to anything other than 1, the boot time increases dramatically (up to 2 mins plus for this clean VM). Does that mean I have something wrong with one of the processors in the physical machine do you think? I have run Virtualbox before using multiple processors and it has always been fine?

[Perryg]

The DEVs define it this way. The actual tuning of multi-cores needs work. That said I think it must apply to Windows more than Linux because I can run 2012 with 6 cores ( physical not virtual ) and it works just fine, ( no graphics acceleration ) but I am using Linux as host, and build my own version of VirtualBox tuned to my system.

You might drop the DEVs a note and ask about this in more depth https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Community.

Note: about the 3D acceleration of 2012 server. Why would you need it. The purpose of server is to just work. All you need to do in it is configure things and that does not need 3D graphics.

[Perryg]

I installed a new 2012r2 to test this on my system. As you can see even with 6 cores it boots in about 25 to 30 seconds. I am however working with a very specialized version of VirtualBox and actually from the future, so don't take too much into it except that it is doable. Also this is a bare install. No other services have been added.

2012-6 core-boot 25-30_seconds.png (105.65 KiB) Viewed 15728 times

[bengallienne]

I guess you have made some specific changes to your virtualbox version in order for that to be the case? Or is the specialization unrelated?

The thing I really don't understand is that using the same VM on my desktop (i7), the performance improves with multiple cores, whereas on the server which has 2 six-core Intel Xeons it gets worse. It doesn't make any sense to my mind, but then I don't know a great deal about this! (as is probably patently obvious).

As you understand do all hypervisors work this way?

[Perryg]

I think it has to do with sockets actually. I am not sure and by no means an expert in my eyes anyway. I have found that some PCs and OSes have a large part to do with it. You mentioned raid before and I don't use raid so maybe that has something to do. Now for large server installations I use Oracle VM, the big brother of VirtualBox, but it is based on Xen and on a Linux server only.

I have not tested all hypervisors to any extent, but I feel VirtualBox to be the fastest of the ones that work in so many OSes and support as many guests.

I really think that the processors you are using might have something to do with it. Since you are the only one that can provide the DEVs with information they may need you should talk to them about this.