8 CPU's in a VM

[samuk]

Why am i not able to assign 8 CPUs to a Windows 2003 enterprise server?

Vsphere 4 Enterprise is being used, with balde server with quadcore dual CPS's

[m2-it-solutions]

Hello,

you need enterprise+

regards

Martin

[samuk]

i assume i can upgrade to this? a big cost for a small requirement...!

[Basheer09]

Look for your ESX license configuration, It should be Enterprise plus.

Kindly consider awarding point if this info is useful.

[AWo]

How many sockets are licensed? You need to have a license for each socket (quadcore) to enable all eight cores.

BTW, I would not assign 8 vCPU's if I have "only" 8 cores.

Edited: And yes, you need Enterprise+

AWo

VCP 3 & 4

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Edited by AWo

[Basheer09]

If you are looking for feasible solution, you could run the VM on 4 vCPUs.

[samuk]

Licensed for 2 Physical CPU's (1-6 core per CPU)

Server has two sockets, 4 cores per spcket.

The ESX server is a dedicated SQL server and no other VM will reside on this esx server.

Reason for wanting more, if the original Physical box had 8 cores, the virtual server has only 4 and we are seeing 50-80% utilization accross the cores..

this is odd as the memory usage is under 2GB..!

[a_p_]

Samuk,

as the other posters already said, you will need Enterprise Plus. This is the only version which supports 8-way vSMP.

see Compare vSphere Editions for Mid-size and Enterprise Businesses

André

[AWo]

Licensed for 2 Physical CPU's (1-6 core per CPU)

Server has two sockets, 4 cores per spcket.

So, no Enterprise+, so 8 vCPU's are not available but you can use all cores and 4 vCPU's per guest.

The ESX server is a dedicated SQL server and no other VM will reside on this esx server.

Why ESX at all then?

Reason for wanting more, if the original Physical box had 8 cores, the virtual server has only 4 and we are seeing 50-80% utilization

accross the cores..

VMware Tools installed?

Best practices for multiprocessoring in virtualization is to start with the smallest number of vCPU's as possible. ESX4 has a better scheduling algorithm as ESX3, but the cores/processors are still not owned by one only one OS. So when work needs to be done which requires all assigned vCPU's to be available the guest has first to wait until the assigned number of vCPU's are free. That slows down the guest. When the guest gets scheduled to these vCPU's (cores) all other guests must be satisfied with the remaining number of cores. That slows down all other guests.

Check this document: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/perf-vsphere-cpu_scheduler.pdf

AWo

VCP 3 & 4

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[amvmware]

Totally agree with AWo. I would even question if the server is a good candidate for virtualisation if it really needs 8 cores - just because you can do it does not mean it is a good idea.

My understanding is VMware offer 8 vCPU's per VM as MS and Citrix were doing it and did not want to give either of them a marketing opportunity.

[AWo]

My understanding is VMware offer 8 vCPU's per VM as MS and Citrix were doing it and did not want to give either of them a marketing

opportunity.

And if more cores become available.

AWo

VCP 3 & 4

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[amvmware]

And if more cores become available.

Then we will see the vendors offering 16 \ 32 64 vCPU's per VM as the hardware vendors are able to offer it physically . This could take us down the road that Microsoft has been going down for years - offering features without enhancing the functionality of the product. Customers are not upgrading to the latest and greatest version of AD or Exchange in the numbers they did years ago as the business or technical benefits are not sufficient to invest in it. A lot of customers now are 2 versions behind the current MS product release and will upgrade when the support is due to expire - perhaps this is what we will start to see with virtualisation solutions going forward.