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Hyper-V Core locking up

Answered Hyper-V Core locking up

  • Monday, December 17, 2012 6:22 AM
     
     
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    system:

    amd athlon x3 (3 cores)--supports amd-v but not iommu

    msi 785gm-e51 mobo

    8gb ram

    hyper-v core 2012

    Having a crashing problem with Hyper-V.  I am currently running 2 vm's on hyper-v core 2012. 1: WHS 2011 with 2 virtual cpus and 2gb ram assigned, and 2: windows 8 pro with 1 cpu and 2gb ram.  Both guest os's are fully updated, and both have integration software installed. 

    The problem seems to be with windows 8 vm.  If I run just the WHS 2011 vm, everything is fine. If i try and start windows 8 vm, it will run for various amounts of time, and then lock up hyper-v core.  If I shut down WHS 2011 vm, and run just windows 8 vm, again it will run for a little while, then locks up hyper-v core.  But again, WHS 2011 vm running by itself will run perfectly fine. 

    Are there any known problems with windows 8 pro running in a vm on hyper-v core?  I have not found anything from searching.  I'm very new to hyper-v, so not sure what logs I should be looking at, or even where they are located.  

    Thanks for any help, 

    Brad

     

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  • Monday, December 17, 2012 6:26 AM
     
     
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    btw, to clarify, when I say it is locking up hyper-v, I do not mean the guest os is locking up, but hyper-v core itself locks up, and the only thing that works is a hard reset.  
     
  • Monday, December 17, 2012 4:48 PM
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    There is a known problem with Windows 8 on Hyper-V 2008 / 208 R2.  There is a patch for this.

    Brian Ehlert
    http://ITProctology.blogspot.com
    Learn. Apply. Repeat.
    Disclaimer: Attempting change is of your own free will.

     
  • Monday, December 17, 2012 10:47 PM
     
     
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    Brian, 

    Thanks for the response.  Does the issue also affect Hyper-V Core 2012?  (btw, I didn't notice that I did not list which version of Hyper-v I am running, sorry about that)  If so, is there possibly a link to the issue? 

    thanks again

     
  • Monday, December 17, 2012 10:58 PM
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    No, this issue does not affect Hyper-V 2012.  It only affects older versions of Hyper-V with 2012 or 8 as the VM OS.

    One thing for you; what is the difference in configuration between these VMs?

    Do you have antivirus installed?

    There must be something special about the Win 8 VM that is causing this issue.  Frankly, I have had zero problems with Win8 in a VM on 2012.  And I run all kinds of mixed OSes.  But there are practices that I just do without thinking and I automatically avoid things that I know or suspect will cause problems.

    Brian Ehlert
    http://ITProctology.blogspot.com
    Learn. Apply. Repeat.
    Disclaimer: Attempting change is of your own free will.

     
  • Monday, December 17, 2012 11:00 PM
     
     
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    I did a little searching for windows 8 patch for hyper-v, and came across the link below.  Is this what you are referring to?  If so, is there another link?  The link provided for the patch goes to a missing page.

    http://blogs.technet.com/b/rmilne/archive/2012/03/23/required-hotfix-for-windows-8-vm-running-on-hyper-v-2008-r2-host.aspx

     
  • Monday, December 17, 2012 11:23 PM
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    http://itproctology.blogspot.com/2012/04/windows-8-in-vm-on-2008-r2-hyper-v.html

    Brian Ehlert
    http://ITProctology.blogspot.com
    Learn. Apply. Repeat.
    Disclaimer: Attempting change is of your own free will.


     
  • Tuesday, December 18, 2012 1:46 AM
     
     
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    Brian,

    (this is going to be kinda long..)

    The only difference in the settings between the 2 VM's, (besides that WHS has 2 virtual cpu's to Win 8 single virtual cpu..more on that in a bit)  would be that WHS has an SCSI controller added that has a dynamic vhd on it from a mirrored pair of 1tb drives, the Win 8 VM does not have access to this disk or the controller. Both VM's share the same NIC.(which I read was ok) Neither VM has a virtual NIC at this time.  Doing a little research, I believe I found what you where referring to.  I found a table that showed for hyper-v in server 08, the win 8 guest requires a hotfix and has a minimum of 4 virtual cpus. However, the table I found for hyper-v 2012 does not list a minimum cpu requirement for win 8, just a max of 32. 

    Is it possible that I need to assign 2 virtual cpu's to the Win 8 VM?

    About the disks in the system which leads to the next difference: There are 4 disks in the system.  2-1tb drives mirrored, a 160gb drive and a 250gb drive.

    The 160gb drive has 3 partitions: 1-Hyper-V Core partition 49.8gb, 2-Win 8 partition 60.14gb, and 3-Backup#2 partition 39.06gb

    The 250gb drive has 2 partitions: 1-WHS 2011 partition 195.77gb, 2-Backup#1 partition 37.11gb

    The 2-1tb drives that are mirrored contain a dynamic vhd with my data...btw, all other vhds are fixed size

    The Win 8 partition contains the vhd that Win 8 is installed in, just as the WHS 2011 partition contains the vhd that WHS is installed in.  The obvious difference between the 2 is that the Win 8 vhd in on the same physical disk as hyper-v core, while the WHS vhd is on a separate physical disk.  IDK if that matters or not, but its the only difference I could think of between the 2 VM's in regard to their disks. 

    If it helps, I can get print screens of the settings for each VM, as well as my Virtual Network Manager. 

    Also, there is some info I left out about how I got Win 8 on the server. (I should not post online after midnight when I'm tired!)

    When I first setup Hyper-V about a month ago, I first installed Hyper-V Core on the server, went through all the configuration stuff (including hvremote, making sure I have proper services running for remote disk management, ect)  The first VM I made was WHS 2011.  Once I had that running successfully, I then made a VM for Windows.  At the time, I had a spare Windows 7 Home Premium license.  So I created a VM for Win 7, and installed it.  Once 7 was fully installed and completely up to date, I ran that for about 2 days concurrently with WHS 2011 VM with no issues.  I decided to take advantage of MS offer to upgrade Win 7 to Win 8 pro for $39.99.  Since I can not remote desktop into win 7 home premium, I used the "Connect to Virtual Machine" option in Hyper-V management  console  (for win 7 pro that's on my laptop) and used IE (within the win 7 vm) to purchase the upgrade and install it.  It is once I upgraded win 7 home premium to win 8 pro that I started having issues. 

    As far as antivirus, I have no aftermarket software installed (in the vm's or on core), just using windows firewall. During the troubleshooting process I have taken down the LAN side of the firewall, and (briefly) even the WAN side with the same results.  This was on Hyper-V Core using command line.  I have not tried disabling windows firewall within win 8 or WHS 2011.  As it stands right now, Hyper-v has lan and wan interfaces covered by its firewall, and both vms have their firewalls also enabled.  I am in the process of building a separate intel atom based pfsense box that will run SNORT and protect the entire network, but that is not involved at this time. 

    Sorry for the really long post, and again, sorry for leaving that info out, I know it frustrating sometimes trying to help someone and they don't tell you everything that is involved.

     
  • Tuesday, December 18, 2012 2:49 AM
     
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    You Win8 VM and the host OS are located in one disk. Will it be a disk I/O issue? Your system (physical and virtual OS) will stop responding while the disk I/O is high, or disk damage, or vhd file corruption, or virtual RAM and paging file replication etc...

    Can you monitor the latency of the disk? Windows built-in performance tool and SCVMM2012 SP1 can do the job.

    How about creating a new WIN8 image in the volume where WHS vm is?


     
  • Wednesday, December 19, 2012 2:10 AM
     
     
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    I feel like the biggest idiot in the world right now.  After reading everything Brian put into this thread, and famous404 as well, I decided to do some experimenting.  I decided to move the win8 vm to the second disk.  I moved the backups that were in backup#1 to backup#2(which was empty).  I then deleted backup#1 partition and shrunk whs 2011 partition down to 165gb.  I then created a new partition (on the same disk as whs) for windows 8. I exported the current win8 vm, deleted the win8 vm, and imported it to the new partition.  Once that was done, I opened the settings for it just to make sure nothing changed.  Then low and behold, I noticed that the path for the OS vhd file was located on the main hyper-v partition!!(the default location) I could swear I did not install it there, but obviously I did.  So I changed the path to the vhd file on the newly imported vm, and sure enough, it works perfect. 

    Brian and famous, really sorry for wasting your time, in the end, it was not a hyper-v problem at all, and entirely a user error.  (bangs head against wall...alot) I voted for both of you for helpful info, but maybe this post (and the line below) should be marked as the answer.

    ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS double and even triple check where you are putting your vhd files for the OS!!!!

    man I feel like a moron. 

    Thank you both for your time and assistance.

    Brad