HT and virtual CPU setup

[OtimJoris]

We have the following server setup (and i know its a rather old beast)

ESXi 4.0 on a Dell Poweredge 1850

CPU Cores: 2x 3GHz Xeon

Memory: 4GB

Hyperthreading: Active

Processor sockets: 2

Cores per socket: 1

Logical Processors: 4

We want to run 2 machines on it. Probably 2 times Windows server 2008, but it could also be a 2003 setup. My question is, should i enable hyperthreading and how should i setup the virtual cpu's?

At the moment we are not sure how to set it up. Should i enable 2 cpu's on both machines, 4 cpu's or only one? Or should i disable the HT at all? We are unsure what to do with it. I do know that the server applications are not HT aware.

I am asking this to take the most out of the limited resources we have available. Buying a different server would be the better option, but that's not going to happen ;(

Greetings,

Joris

[AWo]

IMHO:

- Enable HT

- Assign 1 vCPU max.

AWo

VCP / VMware vEXPERT 2009

[puzzledtux]

Unless your application is multi-threaded there is no point in adding mutiple cpu's to your virtual machines. In doing so you are just adding virtualization overhead in your environment.

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

Enable hyperthreading - it will give the vmkernel more logical CPUs to schedule virtual CPUs to and as the others have said start with a single vCPU and only add additional if your need to and if the applications are multithreaded-

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