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"The wait operation timed out" when running SQL Server in Hyper-V

I'm running SQL Server (2012) on a Hyper-V instance. It has plenty of resources and 25% reserved of the total resources, the VHD is placed on a very fast SSD drive for quick response times.

Every now and then when the applications that use the SQL Server haven't been accessed for a while they get the error "The wait operation timed out". When reloading or retrying to access the database it seems to have been "waken up" and is as fast as ever.

Is there any way to ensure that this soft sleep mode doesn't occur on this kind of environment?

Added

Exception Details: System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The wait operation timed out

Free hypervisor for small configuration

I'm building a server for virtualization for a non profit organization. I was planning on employing VMware ESXI free but I'm second guessing my plan because newer ESXI don't seem to be well supported by the vSphere Client and the web interface which is supposed to be used instead, is not free.

On the hardware we are limited to just one server right now. It's probably going to be an Xeon E5-1650 v3 (6x 3.5 Ghz) on a Supermicro X10SRH-CLN4F-O with 32 GB RAM and 2x 256 GB SSDs and 2x 1TB HDDs for storage. The board has an onboard LSI SAS 3008 controller that is supposed to be working with ESXI.

We are planning to use the server for accouting (WS 2012 R2), pfsense (vpn / routing) and about two linux VMs for our internal database applications, mail (zarafa), active directory (samba 4) and file and printer server.

Would I be better off using XenServer or KVM? On the plus side for XenServer is that it is completely free for me (same as KVM) but has a very good management interface which is kind of lacking for KVM. But on the negative side is the lack for good support for local storage. I wanted to offer raw SSD storage to my VMs for the database (accouting and internal tools - which are the most heavily used), but that seems to be unsupported with XenServer. KVM on the other side seems to support it, but I have bad memories regarding KVM and Windows Server having a really bad performance.

Points that are important for me

• Performance
• Ease of use (like a decent UI for basic tasks, manuals and a good community to ask questions)
• Backup facilities (as there is only one server no migration at the moment, but snapshots and backups of the VMs to transfer them manually onto a new server are required)
• Reliability
• Free of charge

Is the gang scheduling employed by VMware a serious drawback?

I was reading some technet articles as well as this one regarding the differences between the way VMware and hyper v doing CPU scheduling.

I was wondering if I could get some objective info on this. It would seem that the gang scheduling used by VMware is a HUGE disadvantage, but I don't want to just drink the coolaid. Does it seriously impact performance or do the latest iterations of VMware's hyper visors resolve this?

Edit: When I say disadvantage I mean relative to Hyper V's "free processor scheduling" or however KVM does it. The material I was reading didn't say there was any problems with "free processor scheduling" that are avoided with gang scheduling.

How to monitor CPU usage and performance on a Hyper-V server with several VM's

I have a server that is running Windows 2008 64 bit Hyper-V, with 8 gigs of RAM and Intel Xeon X3440 @ 2.53 Ghz, which gives me 8 logical cores in the performance monitor on the host system.

I have set up three Virtual Machines, all running Windows 2008 32 bit.

1. Build server, running Team City
2. Staging server
3. SQL Server, running SQL Server 2005

I have some troubles with the setup in that the host monitor remains responsive at all times, even though the VM's are seemingly working at 100% cpu and are very sluggish and unresponsive. (I have asked a separate question about that.)

So the question here is: What is the best way to monitor how the physical CPU's are actually utilized? The reason I am asking is that I am being told that i cannot reliably use the task manager to monitor CPU usage in a VM.

Running Mac OS X on Hyper-V

I have my workstation setup with a Windows Server 2008 running Hyper-V. Now I really want to install OS X for testing purposes.

Have anyone had any success running Mac OS X in an Hyper-V environment?

Thanks

Why are my HyperV VM's randomly losing connectivity?

I have a strange intermittent connectivity problem happening about once every two weeks.

First my configuration: I am running a HyperV failover cluster with two physical hosts (node01 and node02). The hosts are both running Windows Server 2008 R2 HyperV server (the free one) with SP1. On those hosts I am running two VM's each running Windows Server 2008 R2 Web edition with SP1. My storage server is Windows Storage Server 2008 connected via iSCSI. Both hosts as well as the storage server are running the latest network drivers downloaded directly from Intel's website.

Here's the problem: 99.99% of the time, everything works perfectly. About once every two - three weeks, the VMs will both simultaneously lose network connectivity, both incoming and outgoing. When this happens,

1. I cannot RDP into either VM.
2. I can RDP into either host.
3. I can connect to either VM from the Failover Cluster Manager by right-clicking on the node and selecting 'Connect to Virtual Machine'
4. Once I connect to the VM as described in #3 above, I cannot get to any websites or machines on the LAN. Disabling and re-enabling the virtual network connection inside the VM doesn't fix the problem.
5. If I move the VM to a different node, that fixes the problem (for the next two weeks).
6. If I reboot the host and move the VM back onto it, that fixes the problem (for the next two weeks).
7. When this happens, the failover cluster does NOT automatically failover the VM.
8. There are no unusual event log entries on any of the hosts or VMs.

This has happened about 5 times with the same symptoms as described above. I suspect a network driver or network hardware issue, but since I'm already running the latest drivers I'm not sure what to do about it.

This is a real head-scratcher ... any ideas?

Update

I found a very similar case here: Virutal Machine loses network connectivity on Hyper V Cluster

Update 7/29/2011

After installing hotfixes and updating network drivers, I am still experiencing the same problem. In response to the comment asking for hardware details, the server is an Intel SR1670HV, which is 1U chassis containing two independent S5500HV motherboards. Communication is via the motherboards' integrated NICs which are Intel 82574L. The network driver is version 16.2.49.0.

Can Windows Server 2012 run as a guest VM under Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Host?

Can Windows Server 2012 run as a guest virutal machine under a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V host? If so, are there any important or notable restrictions on what the guest OS can do running in this scenario?

I've got a lab PC with lots of VMs running as guests on a W2K8R2 Hyper-V server. I don't do anything too exotic with the VMs, basically just running tests of my application software installations. I'd be looking for IIS, COM+ and general WinForms installation functionality.

Can I create a Windows Server 2012 guest VM to run in my environment or do I need to upgrade my lab PC to run Server 2012 Hyper-V in order to support a Server 2012 guest?

Hyper-V Manager - How do I Connect to Hyper-V Sever using different credentials

I have Hyper-V Server 2012 (free version) running on a box that is not on any domain.

My Windows 8.1 laptop is on our domain. Both machines are on the same physical network.

On my laptop, when I run Hyper-V Manager and attempt to CONNECT TO SERVER I get:

An error occurred while attempting to connect to server "192.168.100.15". Check that the Virtual Machine Management Service is running and that you are authorized to connect to the server.

You do not have the required permission to complete this task. Contact the administrator of the authorization policy for the computer '192.168.100.15'

What can I do? There is no option to specify alternate credentials. I tried to create a local user on the Hyper-V Server with the same name as the domain user on the laptop, but couldn't since the domain userid is in the format firstname.lastname@company.com.

How do I convert a VMWare VMDK HDD file to a HyperV VHD file?

What's the best way to convert a VMWare VMDK HDD file to a HyperV VHD file?

I've been tasked with converting our environment to HyperV for evaluation purposes. We are MSDN subscribers, so the MS software for the job is probably available to me if you know it.

I have been having hit or miss success with "vmdk2vhd" - about half the time it tells me "Invalid vmdk" and as far as I know they should be fine.

Physical disk or VHD for Hyper-V R2

Using Hyper-V, what are the pros/cons of using the "Physical Hard Disk" option when adding a drive to a VM as opposed to just creating a fixed-size VHD that is as large as the disk?

The intention is for this disk to be allocated to a single VM so there isn't any requirement to have anything else using it.

USB access from guest in Hyper-V

Can a Hyper-V guest operating system access a USB device connected to the Hyper-V host?

If so, how can I set this up?

What's the difference between "Turn Off" and "Shutdown" in Hyper-V

It seems like a simple thing to find the answer too. But, I can't seem to find it in the Hyper-V doc. I'm sure it's there somewhere.

Simple question, when I am in Hyper-V manager there are two options that seem similar but I am sure they are different. "Turn Off..." and "Shut Down..." What do they each do?

My gut tells me that "Turn Off..." is like pulling the plug on a physical machine where as "Shut Down..." sends a shut down message to the guest. Is that correct?

In both cases is the VM no longer running and using memory and CPU resources on the host.

Is there a reason to give a VM a round base-2 amount (2048MB, 4096MB, etc) of memory?

The title pretty much says it all, is there any advantage to giving a VM 2048MB of memory instead of rounding to base-10 and doing 2000MB?

Hyper-V and Hyper-threading: On or off?

With the new Xeon CPUs supporting Hyper-threading, what is the current wisdom with regard to using it (or not) on a Hyper-V host machine?

I was originally under the impression that turning it on in a virtual host environment could be detrimental as the 'extra' CPUs were not true cores. However I've also read (unconfirmed) comments along the lines of MS doing some hard work to get Hyper-V running well in a Hyper-threading environment.

Does anyone have any solid information or experience in this regard? Cheers!

Does Windows 7 support Hyper-V Manager?

Does Windows 7 support running Hyper-V Manager?