production vm server 2003 cpu very high

[01closer]

I have 2 dell 2950 with esxi 4.0 installed and all patches are current. I used veaam 5.0 backup and replication to replicate a vm with microsoft server 2003 from one of the dell 2950 to the other. The only reason for moving the vm is the second dell 2950 has a larger datastore and the one i took it off was running very low on space. The problem is that the server 2003 on the new host is running 90 to 100 percent cpu and the customers are complaing how slow it is. I have compared the settings and the to 2 dell 2950,s and they have the exact same settings applied. I have tried changing the virtual cpu numbers from 4 to 2. I have looked at the cpu hal and it seems proper. I have tried hyper threading on and off. nothing is helping. The vm tools are current and i even reinstalled them. the task manager shows only the needed services running. before moving this vm it worked perfect. i have had 1 year of running this vm with no performance issues. Please advise me if there is something i am missing. I have found this communities a lot of help on other issues in the past

Thank you

Mark Myers

[a_p_]

Some thoughts.

Where do you see the 90-100% CPU load? On the host or in the VM? If in the VM which processes are using the CPU?

What is to role of the 2003 server (file/print/DC)?

Does the host support VT, is it enabled? Verify it is used in the vmware.log file!

Do you have a hardware RAID controller? Does it have battery buffered write cache and is it configured for write-abck operation?

André

[01closer]

. I am please  to see you respond. You have personally helped me solve several issues in this community and i respect your knowelage.

#1 The 2 dell 2950 do not have the vt option in the bios and i am at the most current bios . i know this is not ideal however it was working well on the first dell that is identical.

#2 the server is a all in one it is a DC and File server and exchange 2003

#3 The vm is the culpret with the high cpu load. I sent a sceenshot of usage from the services

#4 It has a raid hardware controller model is perc. there is a battery on it. I am not sure about how to check the config for write back operations. I sent a screen shot from vcenter

Ty mark

[a_p_]

How did you convert/replicate the server. I don't know Veeam's Replicator 5.0, however hot cloning a DC is very dangerous and often (in most cases) causes AD corruption. Do you see any errors/warnings in the Windows Event logs.

I didn't work with DELL servers often, so I'm not aware whether there is a utility to check the battery. To find out about the write-back mode, you should be able to see this in the RAID controller's BIOS when you view the settings of the logical volume(s).

André

[01closer]

The vm was created from a physical to vm using the standalone converter over a year ago. It is a standalone DC. there are no event errors and the veaam basically just copied it to the new server. this vm has worked well untill we moved it

[ThomasMc]

That screenshot doesn't show above 23% CPU maybe a screenshot when it's at 80%+ would be better also sort it by the cpu column

[AureusStone]

Are you getting your performance data from task manager?  Because you shouldn't do that for a virtual machine.

You can either get the stats from perfmon with the VMWare counters or from vCenter.

Could you have a look at the stats from vCenter.  Maybe over a 1 week period?