CPU peaking and need advice on what to pick for sockets and cores.

[logicsound]

I know this a super easy question but I have searched this over and over and I just get more and more confused.    So I would love it if someone could help me without pointing me to other posts :-).

I'm currently running server 2008 that is running sharepoint on esxi 5.0 (free) and the cpu is spiking to 90 percent every 5mins so I think it's time to increase the cpu performance, What do I set the CPU settings to ? 

My hypervisor box is a Lenovo S5500BC with following specs   8 CPU's x 2.399 Ghz  (Intel Xeon E5620 @ 2.40ghz)   My current config is 1 virtual socket and 2 cores per socket.  I also have one windows 7 box that runs on this box too that uses  1 socket and 1 core.  (I can remove this if needed)

THANKS!!

[lvaibhavt]

Hi There,

Couple of things to start off with

• Increase one more vcpu to the machine and check the cpu spike is in control
• Check for the RAM if it is under the threshold
• Open esxtop >> for the VM in question >> under the cpu window check for %lat_c and check %cstp counters. What are the values seen here

I am pretty sure that Share point is a SMP application and will be able to utilize multiple vcpus.

Thanks

[logicsound]

Thanks for the reply.  sorry for the delay...  I am a real newbie...it just took me an hour to figure out how to use esxtop... Had to enable it and start in the esxi, putty, etc, etc...

I can only see %cstp and it's 0.00  I don;t have a %lat_C   mine stops at %swpwt.     Now granted there is nobody at the office now so I suspect I need to run this again tomorrow and report back.  Let me know about the %lat_c

[lvaibhavt]

You need to hit the F key and then add the column -- i guess it is letter i that you need to add.

Also look into adding another vCPU to the VM if the cpu is constantly high on the VM.

lastly check for the cpu load on the host from the esxtop window or from the performance window.

[logicsound]

ok thanks,   I can only toggle on acbdefgh    no I.     Just to verify when you say add another vcpu I need to add 1 virtual socket correct so then I would have 2 virtual sockets and 2 cores.

[lvaibhavt]

Yes ... adding another vcpu to the VM

Adding another core or adding vcpu doesn't effect the performance >>> it is only related on how much your installed OS can support

to check %cstp and %lat_c and to check cpu performance via esxtop >> check esxtop bible (you can google it)