Windows Server 2016 Cluster Troubleshooting Enhancements Active Memory Dump #winserv #WindowsServer2016

When deploying windows servers there are always questions about pagefiles and should we enable the kernel dump and when this happened the disk maybe full, or should we do only a small memory dump 256kb.

These are common questions and there is no direct right answer it all depends. but in windows Server 2016 there is a new option Active Dump.

Active Dump is an active memory dump of the server with filtered out most memory pages used by Virtual machines.And as servers has now days 256GB of memory a 256GB Complete memory dump is not really helping. there for the Active Dump is a perfect solution for this

When doing a complete memory dump on a 256GB you will get a 256 GB memory.dmp file

So when comparing an Complete Memory Dump with Active Dump it will save you 10% in size in the memory.dmp still 25GB is a large file.

Even when the Machine is loaded with 60 virtual machines the difference will still be around the 8-10 % but will still includes the usermode space of the parent partition.

So you can set this option by GUI / Regkey / Powershell / GPO

Registry setting

The change will not take effect until the system is restarted if changing it directly in the registry:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl\

By Powershell

Get-ItemProperty –Path HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl –Name CrashDumpEnabled

Get-ItemProperty –Path HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl –Name FilterPages

 

and the same for the set item.

Set-ItemProperty –Path HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl –Name CrashDumpEnabled –value 1

Set-ItemProperty –Path HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl –Name FilterPages –value 1

The powershell setting is more a Registery item. Also a reboot is needed.

then the GUI setting

Well the GUI setting is easy it is just as you always changed the Memory dump setting just now you set the Active dump.

 

And you can also set this in the GPO

 

 

And if you have mixed your 2012R2 servers with the 2016 servers you need to set a filter so that the GPO is just for the 2016 Server

 

What is change in Windows Server 2016 (10) cluster – Setting Cluster Common Properties #winserv

Happy clustering

Robert Smit

@clusterMVP

https://robertsmit.wordpress.com

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