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pagefile

Following this discussion:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/c5f2786c-ffac-4f14-b7a9-00612cdf784e/server-2016-vm-hangs-shutting-downrestarting-when-the-pagefile-is-on-a-different-vhdx?forum=winserverhyperv

The core problem is the following, for example (simple config), for Exchange or SQL servers in a HYPER-V VM under Windows 2016:

systemdrive for windows system (and sql, exchange core),
datadrive for mbx data or sql-databases
datadrive for log file
drive for pagefile

We create for all this drive a separat VHDX file and add this to the VM as SCSI drive.

The drive for pagefile (fast SSD, NVMe or other) is exclusiv for the pagefile reserved. No other data on it. The drive for pagefile is the only drive with a pagefile for this vm. No second pagefile on the systemdrive or elsewhere.
In this case a running VM can't restart or shutdown.
When you do this, the VM hangs. This did not happen with earlier versions of Windows.
It is not recommended (MS Exchange or SQL recommendations) to set up two Pagefiles (split pagefiles), as this greatly reduces performance.

So we must disable the debug funktion completely in the Windows VM - that works. But not a good way.

Please rerelease the functionality as in previous windows versions!

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  • Jeremy Sherriff commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This issue affects us badly - we use HyperV replication to a DR data centre, and as such we follow MS's best practise of separating out the page file to a different volume, volume and not replicating that volume. This introduces the same bug described.

    I can confirm that disabling the memory dump option resolves the issue.

  • Brachus commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Having the issue as well. We're using Azure Site Recovery with Hyper-V replicas.

    C'mon M$$$, if you're pushing us all to Azure and Cloud related services you should be able to address this one.

  • GraniteStateColin commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I can also confirm this problem -- couldn't shut down or execute a restart with the pagefile on a separate volume. Found out about this bug in Hyper-V, changed nothing except moving the pagefile to the boot volume and it worked fine. I believe this problem is new to Server 2016. I believe it did support a separate volume in Server 2012.

    Also, as to reasoning to want to put the pagefile on a separate volume, there are at least 2 big ones:

    1. So the pagefile isn't part of a backup
    2. If performance of the base drives is not critical, then allowing those to be HDD (or an HDD RAID array) is fine, but for performance reasons it would be better to put the pagefile on an SSD.

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