Hello,
We run Hyper-V on a couple Server 2008 R2 hosts, and the primary one hosts 11 guests, all Server 2008 R2. Several of the guests are absolutely critical (namely the one running the Microsoft TMG, which is our firewall / router / VPN server, and the domain controller). I have only been here since the end of July and have been trying to get things straightened out but am limited in time and resources to set things up the way they need to be. This VM server is being strangled at the moment in both RAM and disk space, and it has ended up pausing most of the VMs with "paused critical" at least 6 or 7 times, usually late at night or early in the morning, knocking everything offline. Yes I know we need more disk space, well aware of this and trying to get the new SAN up and running. Most of the guest VHDs are fixed, some are dynamic (and unfortunately the Exchange server has a terabyte worth of snapshots that I need to merge but cannot afford the massive downtime required to do so at the moment). I cannot compact any of the VHDs anymore than I already have, cannot be more efficient than I already with conserving disk space, but the data keeps growing (primarily from the Exchange and the MS SQL servers) and growing at a very fast clip.
I'm aware that I'm going to have to deal with Windows pausing the VMs occasionally in the near-term until I get the SAN going for the non database intensive VMs, can't do anything about that right now. What I want to do is find out if the gateway and domain controller VMs can have *absolute* priority above all the others - interestingly, the gateway usually never pauses, but the domain controller always does so I cannot log into the VPN from home. I'm working on setting up the DRACs in our Dell servers so I can log in from an entirely independent network but that isn't up yet and I have extremely limited time to work on each of these tasks at hand. All I want is to ensure the gw and domain controller remain up - the rest can be paused - until I can get the ball rolling elsewhere. Can I set priority somehow? Really frustrating that Hyper-V doesn't at least have an option to fire off an alarm email or something, but I have to deal with what I have.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Rhiannon