Windows Server 2012 R2 – Hyper-V Virtual Memory Error

[AdinE]

Hello All,

 

After upgrading my physical host to Windows Server 2012 R2, I noticed something different with Hyper-V.

 

When you create a Virtual Machine (VM), you can choose to specify the Startup RAM, and also to enable Dynamic Memory. This is not something new. However, I have noticed that if you use 512 MB for the Startup RAM (which I usually do), you encounter an issue.

 

NOTE: The lowest amount of RAM that you can specify for ‘Minimum RAM’ is 32 MB, and the highest amount of RAM (at least in my case, as I am not sure if it is based on the physical RAM available) is 1048576 MB (or 1024 GB, aka. 1 TB).

 

 

When you use less than 1024 MB (aka 1 GB) of RAM for the Startup RAM, you encounter this: Error 0xc0000017 “There isn’t enough memory available to create a ramdisk device.”

 

 

This doesn’t make any sense, especially when Microsoft’s System Requirements TechNet article specifically shows a minimum of 512 MB is required.

 

Based on my testing, this is NOT related to using Windows Server 2012 R2 as my Hyper-V host Operating System, but rather has to do with trying to create a Virtual Machine (VM) with Windows Server 2012 R2 as its Operating System. I mounted my Windows Server 2012 ISO with 512 MB of RAM for Startup RAM, and didn’t have any issues.

 

So, this is a new development/thing to take note of when you are trying to create VM’s that will run Windows Server 2012 R2 as their Operating System.

 

Hope this helps someone.

[Cavemen]

Has this something to do with the 'generation' of virtual machine that you create, or does the problem exist in both generations of VM's? I'm currently setting up my own testlab (Server 2012 R2 installed with some 2008R2 VM's) and I'd like to preform some migrations to Server 2012R2. Guess I'll have to test it all very thoroughly. Thanks for sharing the info!

[Bendes]

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