Microsoft Hyper-V

Performance Tuning
Jan Marek
Principle Architect
Cloud and Datacenter Platform Team Lead

jan.marek@redtoo.com

Whos Jan?
v-guy

Hyper-V | App-V | MED-V | UE-V | Azure IaaS | VMware vSphere

System Center
Active Directory
PowerShell

MCSE | MCSA | MCITP | MCTS | MCT | MS

Working with Hyper-V since it was Viridian
Microsoft MVP for Hyper-V

This talk is about

Microsoft Hyper-V (Windows Server / Hyper-V Server)
2012 R2

Performance Tuning of
Host
Virtual Machines resources

Host (BIOS)
Latest BIOS/UEFI firmware
Configure BIOS High Perf and GPO High Perf

Host (Hardware)

Latest NICs firmware and drivers (but test, test and test!)
Avoid disabling VMQ (dVMQ)
Enable Jumbo Frames for CSV, iSCSI and LM networks
Disable Non-iSCSI communication types on iSCSI NICs
Dont use NIC teaming for iSCSI NICs use MPIO
NIC teaming inside guest OS (sw-dep) should use SR-IOV NICs
Use 4k native disks
Use 64k allocation unit size for drives hosting VHD(X)
Use auto-size for Page File
Use processors with SLAT support and large cache
Do NOT use MemoryReserve reg key

Use Parent Partition PerfMon

Always measure the CPU usage of the physical system by using
the Hyper-V Hypervisor Processor performance counters

Host (OS)
Core OS Edition
Windows Update + Hotfixes
&
Antivirus Exclusions

Host (Hyper-V)
Only Hyper-V role
VM Default Paths on non-system drive
Avoid multiple Virtual Network Switches (use VLANs)
Do NOT share adapter with physical OS

Do NOT leave Hyper-V Manager running

Leave Host NUMA enabled

Virtual Machine
No NUMA

VM
NUMA n1

Host

NUMA n2

vNUMA n1

vs.

vNUMA n1

VM
NUMA n1

Host

NUMA n2

Virtual Machine
Supported Guest OS (pay attention to Generation version)

Virtual Machine
9000

Dynamic Memory

8000

7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
Example 1

Example 2

Demand

Buffer/Free

Assigned

Example 3

Example 4

Memory Left

Virtual Machine

High Weight
3000

Dynamic Memory

2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
1 hour

2 hours

3 hours
Minimum

4 hours

5 hours

Demand

6 hours

7 hours

8 hours

7 hours

8 hours

Assigned

Low Weight
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000

500
0
1 hour

2 hours

3 hours
Minimum

4 hours

5 hours

Demand

6 hours
Assigned

Virtual Machine
Use Legacy Network Adapter only for PXE boot (Gen 1)
Remove unused vDevices (Gen 1)
VSP
VMbus

SYNTHETIC

Driver

hypervisor
hardware

LEGACY

Legacy Network Adapter = Intel 21140

Virtual Machine
Use Generation 2

Emulated 2 Synthetic

Generation 1 VM

Generation 2 VM

Virtual Machine
Install and update IS
Leave VM on logon screen + disable screen saver
Do NOT use VMconnect as a standard to connect to VM
Disable background activities:

SuperFetch
Windows Search
Scheduled Tasks (Defrag,)
Aero (optimize for performance)

Virtual Machine
Avoid using DHCP Guard and Router Guard
Dont forget to turn off Port Mirroring after use

For VLAN comm. use NICs with

NDIS_ENCAPSULATION_IEEE_802_3_P_AND_Q_IN_OOB encapsulation for

Large Send Offload and checksum offload support

Configure vRSS

VM Storage
Avoid CheckPoints
Avoid vIDE for data disks (Gen 1)
Use VHDX (instead of VHD or PT)
Fixed VHDs are recommended
Dynamic VHDXs are recommended
Check VHD (not VHDX) data allignment
Use ReFS in Hyper-V vNext
Use Virtual HBAs only if needed
Use Storage QoS

VM Storage
Configure Advanced I/O balancer only if needed (reg)
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\StorVsp\
\IOBalance_Enabled
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\StorVsp\
\IOBalance_KeepHwBusyLatencyTarget_Microseconds
-

how much work, represented by a latency value, the balancer allows to be issued to the hardware before throttling to provide better balance
default is 83ms

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\StorVsp\
\IOBalance_AllowedPercentOverheadDueToFlowSwitching
-

how much work the balancer issues from a virtual machine before switching to another virtual machine
default is 8%

Cluster
Use Hyper-V cluster only for Hyper-V HA services
Separate Network Communication
Mgmt | VM | LM | HB | CSV | iSCSI | Backup

Set preferred network for CSV communication

(Get-ClusterNetwork "Cluster Network 1").Metric = 700 (< 1000)

Use CSV cache for read-oriented VMs (VDI)

(Get-Cluster).BlockCacheSize = 1024

LM: for >10Gbps use RDMA, for <10Gbps use compression

LM: increase the number of send and receive buffers on each LM NIC
Avoid using Low Priority VMs

SMB storage
Use 10Gbps RDMA NICs
Use Storage Spaces Write-Back Cache
Async Hyper-V cluster is not supported
Hosting SMB storage inside VM running on Hyper-V Cluster is
not supported

Thank you!
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