VMware Question - Windows 7/8 running on vSphere 5.5

[warkaj1]

Anyone else seeing large IO from running a workstation OS like Windows 7 or 8 on a virtual machine hosted on a vSphere 5.5 ESXi host?

These things are averaging 50 IOPs with max of 450-900 IOPs when my SQL machines are averaging about 20 and maxing at 540 IOPs. Makes no sense why a workstation that no one has logged into since December is outpacing a SQL machine that churns 24/7.

Any thoughts?

[jrich52352]

I havent noticed anything, but i only run a small handful of win7 boxes.

maybe its some crazy scheduled tasks, their indexing...  you should be able to figure out whats taking all the IOPS in task manager.

[mgram128 · Accepted solution]

Andrew, two things that I would look at are:

1) Windows Updates.  If your OS is deployed with automatic updates enabled, periodically that OS is going to go pull down updates, apply them, and restart.  Just the restart is going to request about 27,000 IOs so it could be that this is what you are seeing in that spike.

2) AV scanning.  This is another area where desktop OSs on virtual machines can show some surprising IO demands.   Best practices are to deal with AV at the hyper-visor level vs at the OS level.  If you are doing it at the OS level with many desktop OSs, then you should look at staggering the AV scans throughout the workday.

[warkaj1]

haha, defrags were enabled... that might be a big one