From the Web site, we can administer the startup and shutdown of several Windows Services. This goes through IIS and up to the server or remote server. This works well. The only difference now is that we are in a virtual environment and I have discovered something weird.

I thought I would share it in case someone else might have had that one before. The situation is that we have several servers hosting the Windows Services. Each Windows Service points to the same EXE which is located on a NAS share drive. They all use the same account to be able to start them up.

I have identified 3 servers out of 7 which do not perform as fast as they should when starting the Windows Services. They take 2.5 times longer. This is precise. It is always the same numbers. On the 3 servers performing well, this is precise as well and always start a Windows Service 2.5 times faster.

The interesting thing is that one of the identified slow server has been cloned. The server of origin does not have this problem.

So, I have ruled out of the equation IIS as I have the same behavior if I go in the command prompt and issue the same sc command.
It seems we can also rule out of the equation something specific in the virtual server level as even after a clone, one would be slow while the point of origin would be fast.

This seems to be related to the way those servers are set up at the domain level. Anyone would have any idea what could be a factor here?