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Brandon7a
Contributor
Contributor

Virtual sockets vs Cores per socket

I'm currently running vCenter 5 with vSphere 4.1i

When I choose Edit Settings on a VM and highlight CPU it says:
Number of virtual sockets:
Number of cores per socket:

I'm a little confused on what those are. My ESX servers all have 2 quad core processors. With that said, the total virtual sockets I can have is 2 correct?

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arturka
Expert
Expert

Brandon wrote:

I'm currently running vCenter 5 with vSphere 4.1i

When I choose Edit Settings on a VM and highlight CPU it says:
Number of virtual sockets:
Number of cores per socket:

I'm a little confused on what those are. My ESX servers all have 2 quad core processors. With that said, the total virtual sockets I can have is 2 correct?

Hi

nope, you can have up to 8 virtual sockets (1 core per socket) per VM or for example, 2 virtual sockets with 4 cores pers socket

Artur

VCDX77 My blog - http://vmwaremine.com
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Brandon7a
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8 virtual sockets would make sense but why can I only choose a max of 4 from the drop down menu?

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

The virtual sockets/cores per socket can be used to assign multiple virtual CPUs to a VM. With your hardware (2 quad core processors) you have 8 cores (disregarding HyperThreading) which will allow you to assign up to 8 vCPUs to a guest OS depending on the ESXi license. Since some operating systems do not support that many CPUs you can use the cores per socket setting to present the vCPUs as multi core vCPUs to the VM.

André

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Brandon7a
Contributor
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Being that I can only choose a max of 4 virtual sockets and 1 core per socket from the drop down menus mean I can only have a max of 4 virtual CPU's per VM?

On a VM, if I choose 2 virtual sockets and 1 core per socket from the menus it is saying that the VM has 2 virtual CPU's and those virtual CPU's are located on 1 core?

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Being that I can only choose a max  of 4 virtual sockets and 1 core per socket from the drop down menus  mean I can only have a max of 4 virtual CPU's per VM?

Yes, the number of vCPUs you can select depends on the VM's guest OS setting nd the ESXi license you use.

On  a VM, if I choose 2 virtual sockets and 1 core per socket from the  menus it is saying that the VM has 2 virtual CPU's and those virtual  CPU's are located on 1 core?
A VM with 2 vCPUs configured (regardless whether 2 x 1 core or 1 x 2 cores) will use 2 physical cores for processing.
André
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