Migration job transfers may take longer than expected in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

[System-Center-Team]

First published on TECHNET on Oct 12, 2011

Here’s another new KB article we published today. This one involves a VMM R2 migration appearing to take longer than expected:

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Symptoms

Transfers during a System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM R2) migration appear to take longer than expected.

Cause

This can happen because in SCVMM R2, BITS transfers are set to be encrypted by default.

Resolution

This is by design, although if you have implemented another form of encryption such as IPsec, or have otherwise secured your virtualized environment, you may want to take advantage of the new option in SCVMM R2 to allow unencrypted file transfers for individual library servers and individual host groups. Allowing unencrypted file transfers can improve performance during virtual machine creation and migration. For files to be transferred unencrypted, unencrypted file transfers must be allowed on both the source and destination computer. This option is available by updating the properties of the library server.

Disable Bits encryption for both Hosts and the SCVMM Library:

Disabling SCVMM 2008 R2 Encrypted Transfers for Hosts

1. Open the VMM Administrator Console
2. Depending on your environment configuration, select the Host Groups (e.g. All Hosts) that has all of your Hyper-V hosts
3. Right-click on the Host Folder (e.g. All Hosts)
4. In the ‘Allow Unencrypted file transfers’, check the box.

Disabling SCVMM 2008 R2 Encrypted Transfers for Libraries

1. Open the VMM Administrator Console
2. Click the Library tab (displays Library servers, assets)
3. Right-click on the library server and select properties
4. Check the ‘Allow unencrypted file transfers’
5. Click OK

More Information

References:

How to Modify the Properties of a Host Group : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc956106.aspx
How to Allow Unencrypted File Transfers for a Library Server : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee236497.aspx
Hardening VMM Library Servers : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd548289.aspx

For the following issues please reference the blog post below:

How to Troubleshoot Slow BITS Performance, Hosts 'Not Responding' and 'Needs Attention' Communication Issues : http://blogs.technet.com/b/jonjor/archive/2008/12/29/how-to-troubleshoot-slow-bits-performance-...

1. Deployment or migration of data utilizing LAN (not SAN Transfer) is very slow in general
2. BITS is slow in one direction only: Fast from Host01 to Host02, but slow from Host02 to Host01 for example
3. Host reports in SCVMM Admin Console "Host not responding" or "Needs attention"
4. Under 'Status' of the Host the following may show "Not Responding"
- Connection status
- Agent Status

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For the most current version of this article please see the following:

2625478: Migration job transfers may take longer than expected in System Center Virtual Machine...

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

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