SMB access of array from VM makes unRAID unresponsive


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I've been struggling with this issue for a while and have finally figured out (at least broadly) what is causing the problem.

 

About once every 24 hrs, unRAID interfaces (both web and ssh) become unresponsive and the SMB share can't be accessed, but my Win8.1 VM keeps running and I can access it through RDP w/o issue. There's been no errors in the syslog. I haven't been able to find a hardware problem. I started suspecting the VM. So I left the VM off for a few days and the problems disappeared. I then tried to narrow it down further by starting the VM but limiting the programs that ran. Best as I can tell, the problem only happens when the VM access the unRAID SMB share. If I disable any programs that would access the SMB share, and only run ones that access the "local" drive (running on the cache drive), the problems go away. After running the VM with no SMB share access for 8 days, the server has been rock solid.

 

So what is it about the VM accessing the unRAID SMB share that causes the problem? When the VM access the share, the server doesn't immediately freeze up. It generally lasts less than 24 hours though, and never much more than that.

 

I'm really out of ideas and the next step is to just give up using KVM on unRAID and just setup a separate box running Hyper-V. I'd hate to do that though because I do like running a single box and the beefier hardware I used for the unRAID pretty much goes to waste if it's not running any VMs.

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Sounds like you're starving Unraid of processing power. You could try reducing the amount of cores you assign to the VM and see if you notice an improvement?

 

I'll try it, though that seems unlikely to me. I've run unRAID on far less than 4 threads from a Core i7-4790 without issue.

Try also to let unraid have core 0 if it doesn't already have it.

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