Deploying a single template is slow in vCenter Server

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article guides you through determining whether one or multiple templates are slow to deploy. This article provides steps to narrow down whether it is one template or multiple templates, as well as resolutions to commonly seen problems.

Symptoms:

• Template deployment is slow for a single template.
• All other templates function as expected.

Note: If template deployment is slow for all templates, see Diagnosing slow deployment of templates or clones from vCenter Server (1004002).

Environment

VMware VirtualCenter 2.5.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x

Resolution

If template deployment is slow for on a single template try one of these options:

Note: The steps below require conversion of templates to virtual machines and vice-versa. For more information, see the vSphere Datacenter Administration Guide.

• If the disk format is sparse, slow deployment may occur. To verify if this is the issue:
  1. Convert the template back to a virtual machine.
  2. Clone the virtual machine.
  3. Convert the new cloned virtual machine to a template and deploy it.
     
     This eliminates any issues due to the format of the disks associated with the template because it is written in a fully allocated format.
     
     
• If there are multiple hard disks in the template virtual machine, remove all disks but one.
  
  Note: You need to convert the template back to a virtual machine to remove the disks.
  
  When this is complete, attempt deployment of the template again and see if the template deployment speed improves.
  
  
• Move the template to a different datastore by converting the template to a virtual machine and performing a cold migration to the new datastore. When the migration is complete, convert to template again and attempt deployment.
  
  
• Validate if there is invalid configuration file configuration by converting the template back to a virtual machine. When this is done, create a new virtual machine and attach the disk(s) from the template to the new virtual machine. Convert this virtual machine to a template and attempt deployment.

Additional Information

Diagnosing slow deployment of templates or clones from vCenter Server