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I have a three server Hyper-V 2012 cluster which points at LUNs based on an HP MSA P2000 G3 SAN for the virtual hard disk storage. I am experiencing speed issues and one thing that has been highlighted is latency in the read/write speed to and from the SAN. I spoke to HPE who checked the SAN for hardware faults and found nothing. However, to me the performance data over the last four days looks to be spiking well above the 10-20ms range deemed acceptable. I don't have anything to compare my charts to as a baseline was never taken.

This storage system has worked well in the past and there haven't been any recent changes. If anyone can provide me with any insight into this i'd be very grateful.

Many thanks,

Steve

P2000 Perfromance Graph

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  • How many disks are installed? How are the vdisks arranged? Is this a SAS, Fiber Channel or iSCSI unit?
    – ewwhite
    Sep 5, 2016 at 16:40
  • Adding to @ewwhite What kind of disks you have in the SAN (SATA, Nearline SAS, SAS, flash)? What RAID level? Can you pull performance reports per virtual machine, at the same time you pull the performance reports of the SAN? Do you have an accurate inventory of what each virtual machine/physical machine (attached to the SAN) does?
    – CIA
    Sep 5, 2016 at 16:54
  • It's a low-end SAN. He won't get per-VM stats or any granular info.
    – ewwhite
    Sep 5, 2016 at 16:56
  • He should be able to pull performance monitor data from the HyperV servers at least.
    – CIA
    Sep 5, 2016 at 17:48
  • There are two arrays of six SAS disks each. The first array is made up of 6 x 1TB 2.5inch 7.5k drives. The second is 6 x 600GB 2.5inch 10k drives. Both arrays are Raid10 and it is an iSCSI unit. We are running 10VMs in total which do a mixture of things: File storage, SQL, Exchange and user applications (RDS). It is a low end SAN - you're right. The amount of performance data is limited on the console aside from the graph I have attached. These is a CLI but my experience of this is limited. Performance data from the Resouce Monitor in Hyper-V seems to reflect the performance stats on the SAN. Sep 6, 2016 at 7:55

1 Answer 1

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This model of HP SAN array had a problem with the write cache modules failing. These are 4GB Compact Flash cards installed on the controller modules.

If this is sudden behavior, that may be worth a check.

I'd suggest controller failover, but need the details about what type of P2000 G3 array this is (iSCSI, SAS, FC) and how it's connected to your hosts.

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  • That is an excellent call. We actually had one of these compact flash cards fail not long after we got the SAN up and runnning. HP replaced it under warranty. The problem was flagged up in the web management console. Unfortunately nothing like this is showing up this time and HP have checked the system logs and confirm all hardware performing normally. Sep 6, 2016 at 7:57
  • Have you failed over to the other controller to test performance?
    – ewwhite
    Sep 6, 2016 at 9:33
  • The arrays are already split between the controllers. The 7.5k array is on controller A and 10k on B. The graphs seem to show equally poor response on either array, slightly worse on B. This was my rational for not testing all the load on one controller. Sep 6, 2016 at 9:38

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