Windows 10: Suspend and Resume VM much slower on HYPER-V than vmware

Hi there

particularly @Kari - you seem to be the resident expert on HYPER-V !!!!

I have two reasonably identical VM's (Linux CENTOS 7 basically runnng SAMBA, PLEX media server, logitech media server and sharing some files).

The shared files are on 2 logical RAID 0 arrays -- Hardware RAID controller used ( actual hardware 2 X 4 TB and 2 X 3 TB 7200 rpm HDD's) connect as RAW HDD's so the native XFS Linux file system is used on the VM's -- no problem there with that BTW.

Running Windows 2010 PRO x-64GB version build 1607 with vmware - suspend VM -- takes about 4 secs. With HYPER-V suspend takes sometimes over a minute.

Both VM's have the OS itself on an SSD and they aren't running concurrently - to get HYPER-V you need to disable vmware and vice versa.

At suspend time the servers don't have any clients accessing them - i.e there's no remote TV's watching streamed video from PLEX.

Any ideas !!! -- can't understand why the suspend and resume function takes so long on HYPER-V -- it's a very useful facility BTW.

Cheers
jimbo

:)

 

Windows 10 Virtual PC/ Hyper-V to run XP Mode

I hope you installed Windows 10 for more than just Hyper-V, because Hyper-V was also available in Windows 8, and Windows 7 had a version of Hyper-V called Windows Virtual PC, which was designed to run Windows XP.

I'll tell you right off the top that I can't answer your question about Hyper-V because I have limited experience with it. I did make it work, but it took several tries before I finally figured it out. I can also say from experience that VirtualBox and VMware
Workstation Player both run Windows XP very well and they're much easier to understand and setup than Hyper-V. And they're free. I think you'll enjoy either one more than Hyper-V.

Hyper-V was originally written for servers, which is why it's more complicated to setup compared to creating a VM in either VirtualBox or VMware. A lot of the terminology in Hyper-V is about servers, too.

You really ought to try VB or VMware - your XP VM will be up and running in minutes.

If you already have a .vhd you can open it in both programs, but eventually you'll want to convert it to a native format.

 

Hyper V

Hyper-V is either installed or not installed. It cannot be disabled.

After I was done experimenting with Hyper-V I deleted my VM and uninstalled Hyper-V. Poof, gone.

Hyper-V worked fine for me, but I still prefer VMWare. Hyper-V works best with Ethernet; it's trickier with WiFi.

 

First, there are two ways to suspend a Hyper-V vm, Save (#1 in screenshot below) and Pause (#2):





Both can also be found in Action menu. Using PowerShell, the cmdlets are Save-VM "vm_name" (to resume Start-VM "vm_name") to save vm, and Suspend-VM "vm_name" (to resume Resume-VM "vm_name") to pause vm.

Difference between these two methods is that whereas Pause only releases all host processor resources still reserving RAM allocated to it, Save releases all host resources, including RAM. Pausing and resuming a vm is instant and the recommended way to suspend if your host has enough RAM to manage without part allocated to vm.

You could say that relation of these two suspend options is as relation of Sleep (Pause) and Hibernate (Save) on a physical machine.

Saving a vm really takes some time. This, the time needed of course depends on how much is going on, how many and how resource hungry processes are running on vm. Testing it just now on three virtual machines with different programs up and running I got Save times from 12 - 15 seconds (resume 5 to 10 seconds, no programs running) up to 25 - 30 seconds (resume 20 - 25 seconds, Windows Update installing updates, a document open in Word, a presentation in PowerShell, video playing in Kodi and so on). These times on low end i5 / 12 GB / 7200 spinner laptop host.

Not knowing Plex I can only guess that it might be at least a partial reason for your slow suspend. Why VMware does this faster, I have not a faintest clue. Sorry.



Tip Did you know that you can shut down / restart the host letting virtual machines to be up and running? I have selected Save the virtual machine state as Automatic Stop Action for all my virtual machines:





When I shut down the host, all my virtual machines running at that moment will be automatically saved. After restart they are not automatically resumed because I have selected Automatically start if it was running when the service stopped option in Automatic Start Options:



If I want a specific vm be run every time I sign in to Windows on host I would select Always start this vm automatically.