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Is this normal behavior for a Continuous Available share?

Darin McClain 1 Reputation point
2021-02-09T14:25:27.22+00:00

Having a performance issue where half the time on login, 16VHD files take upwards of 200 seconds to properly mount and become usable. The other half the time, they mount quickly, before you even reach the desktop.

When it works perfectly, I can watch the open files module on one of the server nodes read 32 files are open within a few seconds of logging in.

When it doesn't work properly, only 16 files are open after a few seconds, then about 200 seconds later, the remaining 16 files are opened, and they finally become usable in windows.

Is this normal behavior by any means? Why are my files essentially being opened twice? And why the random delay?

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What my open files look like after 200 seconds when the issue occurs, also what it looks like immediately when the issue doesn't occur.

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Windows Server Clustering
Windows Server Clustering
Windows Server: A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.Clustering: The grouping of multiple servers in a way that allows them to appear to be a single unit to client computers on a network. Clustering is a means of increasing network capacity, providing live backup in case one of the servers fails, and improving data security.
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  1. Xiaowei He 9,876 Reputation points
    2021-02-10T07:17:42.87+00:00

    Hi,

    1. Please check if there's any third-party application running on the cluster nodes, such as anti-virus application, if yes, please uninstall them and check if the delay still exists.
    2. It's recommended to run Cluster validation at a maintenace time, check if there are any apparent issues on the storage. Please notice, when running cluster validation, the storage will be inaccessible temporarily.
    3. How do we set the cluster storage, via ISCSI, FC or others? If we use network connection to connect to the cluster storage, please also check if the network bandwidth is sufficient enough.
    4. It's also recommended to involve storage vendor to check if the storage has any performance issue.

    Thanks for your time!
    Best Regards,
    Anne

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  2. Darin McClain 1 Reputation point
    2021-02-10T14:05:31.107+00:00

    @Xiaowei He No 3rd party programs, just 2 plain 2019 servers with nothing on them but the clustering role. I had tried using StarWind's software at one point to see if it made a difference, but I had the same exact delay issue using their software to create disks. I also forgot to mention, the problem goes away when I turn Continuous Availability off. But of course, this is the feature I need most.

    Here's a copy of the Validation Report: http://echo7.awardspace.biz/tmp5D85.htm but please ignore Cluster Disk 1, a quorum disk. It's left over from my StarWind Test and I can't get rid of it. Thinking I must of needed to remove the whole clustering role to get rid of it? I don't really know what to make of the report. I set Cluster Disk 2 offline to run the validation test.

    These servers are loaded in VMWare vSphere, and I use a shared disk created by vSphere that both VMs access at the same time. No SCSI stuff. The disk is stored on a datastore in VMWare, on Pure Storage Appliance. I have reached out to them, and they did a very good job looking at the issue and reviewing things behind the scenes. They found no performance issues.

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