Cpu near 100%

[vcurtar]

Good morning to all,
a few months ago I virtualized the server that ran Exchange2007 on Win2008 with the vmware tools. The original machine was a HPdl80g5 with 8Gb Ram
The host is running on a PRIMERGY now bx920 s2 with 2processors with 6 cores each
The virtual machine has 8GB of ram and 4 vcpu
The problem is that all 4 vcpu are at close vicinity of the 100%and consequently the machine often freezes for a few seconds
Some remedy for everything?
Thanks in advance

[firestartah]

Hi

Are VMTools up to date on the server and is the exchange server the only virtual machine on your ESX host? Have you set any reservations or affinities that possibly could be causing these issues?

Gregg

[a_p_]

Some questions:

• What's the overall workload on the ESXi host? How many VM's/how many vCPUs assigned?
• What kind of storage do you use? In case of local storage/RAID, which RAID level?
• Does the RAID controller have a BBU option attached for write-back operation? This makes a huge difference in disk speed, which might affect the CPU!

André

[vcurtar]

Hi, the vmware tools are updated and below I have printed configuration

[firestartah]

Hi

Please can you post a screenshot of an ESXTOP output. Also is there a reason that you have shares set for the server seeing as i assume it is on it's own ESXi host? What does the performance monitor show in the actual server? Is it also showing all four cpu's as 100% usage?

Gregg

[vcurtar]

6 virtual machine

The storage is netapp 3210, raid 4

yes we have bbu option attached for write back operation

[NeilGingell]

Have you checked for any abnormal processes in the guest? I.e. is there any paging taking place?

From an Exchange perspective are all of the relevant anti-virus exclusions in place? This could contribute to a high CPU overhead.

[rickardnobel]

Could you post a screen shot of Task Manager inside the VM, both the Performance tab and the Processes tab, sorted on CPU.

[vcurtar]

Sorry  but I don't understand what do you mean

"Also is there a reason that you have shares set for the server seeing as i assume it is on it's own ESXi host? "

[firestartah]

Hi

Sorry i thought i saw you mention something that made out it had a dedicated host but seems you didn't. Although what are your reasons for setting shares for the server?

Gregg

[vcurtar]

When you have made ​​the transition from physical to virtual I left the default settings
This parameter can affect the performance of which you speak and if so what would be the best setting?

[firestartah]

It depends on a number of things but if you never set the shares values and you dont use it anywhere else then i would set if back to normal although possibly previously p2v'd servers also have these shares values and hence why you are experiencing problems with your current server as the shares values allocated aren't sufficient

Have a look and see if you have shares allocated to machines that possibly dont need high shares values and change those which will allow you exchange server to gain access to resources more easily

Gregg

[vcurtar]

Ok I'll try

Thanks

[rickardnobel]

I agree that it is good to not have non default shares configured if not needed, but I am not certain that this is the problem here. Since the Exchange server does have quite a high shares value (8000, spread over vCPU) it should be able to get all CPU it needs. If there are other extremly CPU intensive VMs running with even higher Shares then the Exchange VM could be of course be starved.

It would be interesting to see :

* READY values for the VM

* Total CPU usage on host

* View from internal Task Manager in the VM

[firestartah]

Hi

did you solve the problem in the end?

Gregg