Dear Forum!

I newly installed hyper-V 2012 (Core) on a Supermicro Mainboard with an ADM Opteron 6344 32GB RAM

System information:

Manufacturer        : Supermicro
Model               : H8SGL
Name                : HYPERV
PrimaryOwnerName    : Windows User
TotalPhysicalMemory : 34341036032

After configuration of the host and two guests with fixed memory (host1: 4GB RAM, host2: 12GB RAM no dynamic memory used) I discovered that after 2 days there was no memory available on the host anymore. The Taskmgr process list shows maxx 2GB used memory, the performance tab shows completely used memory.

I installed all the available updates, rebooted and the memory usage gets back to normal. But after another 2 days the memory on the host was again completely used. There is no third party software installed that would eat up memory. I also tried to set the registry key for limiting host memory to 2048MB with no luck.

I always log out from the server not only disconnecting, because I read that there could be a problem with disconnected RDP sessions.

I tried turning off NUMA on the host, gave less memory to the guests but still the same behavior. When the memory is completely taken by the host I am not able to add a new virtual machine anymore, because the host complains about not enough memory left.

Is there anything I am missing?

Any suggestions on what I could try?

There are no agents or third party drivers installed on the hypervisor at all?

It sounds as if there is some piece of software running that has a memory leak.

Many third party drivers include management agents that can cause problems.  And there are other possibilities.

But an entirely clean install, with no other agents, drivers, or Roles / Features installed I would not expect this behavior.

The only driver installed is the raid-controller driver of my 3ware 9750-4i. But I already used the exact same driver in another server 2012 without any issue.

I deinstalled this driver today, but no change, the memory is still filled up :-(

Probably I reinstall the hole server on the weekend again to make shure that it is a really clean installation.

No antivirus?  That's another thing that is notorious for creating problems.

No antivirus!

I think the best and fastest way is a new installation.

The only thing I fear is that the behavior is the same after reinstall.

Hi,

It seems to be a memory leak issue. If reinstall is acceptable, you could first have a try is it will be a quicker way to workaround the issue. Also install all updates after that and see if issue will reoccr.

Meanwhile it is recommanded to contact Microsoft online support for such an issue as it will take a long time to troubleshoot in forum.

I reinstalled the Server an hour ago and will now install all available updates!

I didnt even install the original raid driver for my 3ware controller and stay for now with the windows driver.

The only thing I configured is a network teaming and remote access. Nothing else.

I will report back to the forum if the error reoccurs. If the error is still there it is definitely a Microsoft issue!

Unfortunately the behavior is exactly the same.

Server running since Friday and 99% of the memory is taken. I will contact online support...

The memory not used by my machines is listed as non-paged pool. mybe this is a normal behavior? I wil try to make a new virtual machine to see if the memory is still usable.

I have now solved the problem! It was a memory leak caused by a hardware USB 3.0 PCI-Express Card. I wanted to use it for my backups to speed them up since the mainboard has only USB 2.0 Ports.

The card was a Transcend TS-PDU3 card. The leak occurred already if the card was only present, no driver was installed! Using other slots made no difference. As soon as I removed the card the server was working completely normal. After reinserting the card the problem was back!

Thanks everybody for your help!

I have now solved the problem! It was a memory leak caused by a hardware USB 3.0 PCI-Express Card. I wanted to use it for my backups to speed them up since the mainboard has only USB 2.0 Ports.

The card was a Transcend TS-PDU3 card. The leak occurred already if the card was only present, no driver was installed! Using other slots made no difference. As soon as I removed the card the server was working completely normal. After reinserting the card the problem was back!

Thanks everybody for your help!

That's interesting...

Glad you figgured it out! :-)

--

Marius

I have now solved the problem! It was a memory leak caused by a hardware USB 3.0 PCI-Express Card. I wanted to use it for my backups to speed them up since the mainboard has only USB 2.0 Ports.

The card was a Transcend TS-PDU3 card. The leak occurred already if the card was only present, no driver was installed! Using other slots made no difference. As soon as I removed the card the server was working completely normal. After reinserting the card the problem was back!

Thanks everybody for your help!

Thank you very much for that information. Ive just started to search for PCIE usb 3.0 cards which are compatible with server 2012. Now I know that this card is not compatible.