console freeze during vmotions

[taylorb]

I recently made some big changes.  I P2V'ed our physical Vcenter 4.1 server and then upgraded it to 5.0.   Immediately after the upgrade, CPU utilization when through the roof, so I added additional vCPU (3 total now).  Cpu utilization seems fine now.  However, when I perform a major operation like a multi server Vmotion, any console windows that I have open on client computers, freeze for about 15 seconds.  The Vcenter VM is inlcuded in this.  The vmotion completes and as far as I can tell the VMs don't drop connectivity, it is just that the Console windows don't get updated or respond during the vmotion.   Once the Vcenter VM console comes back, I can see through task manager that the CPU never spiked past 50%.

Any ideas of what to check?  Is it performance related?  I do have a local SQL standard running to host the vcenter DB, but that was never an issue on 4.1 with only 2 CPU and less RAM.

[maishsk]

Check the esxtop statistics on the host during the vMotion. It could be that you are saturating the vmnic and therefore no other traffic can go through.

Maish

VMTN Moderator | vExpert

Author of VMware vSphere Design

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[chriswahl]

If the console window of a VM is open while it is being vMotioned, there will be a freeze period as the connection is re-established to the new host.

[taylorb]

It was actually for any VM, not the one being moved. 

At any rate, after a few days of running, it seems to be working well and CPU utilization and IO has levelled off at like 10%.  Kinda strange since I didn't do anything, but I'll take it.