Virtual SMP Processing

[jasongegere]

I have a few questions about Virtual SMP processing.

"4-Way VMware Virtual SMP follows VMware's first delivery of 2-Way VMware Virtual SMP in 2003. 4-Way VMware Virtual SMP will enable a single virtual machine to span four processors, making virtual machines

ideal for all applications, even the most resource-intensive applications like large enterprise databases, ERP applications and Microsoft Exchange. With the introduction of 4-Way VMware Virtual SMP, the powerful benefits of VMware ESX Server virtual machines will be available to every data center server, including the ones previously reserved for the largest applications."

Taken from

The newest version of VMware Version 4 when using the FREE license from VMware for ESXi v4.

When using the 60 day trial everything is unlocked. My only concern at this point is performance with 2 Dual Core Intel CPU. Which would be a possible 8 cores. Does that mean that with 8way Virtual SMPs the job

being processed can use all 8 cores?

If I choose to stay with the FREE trial does that mean only 4 cores can be used for a process? ie: 4000mhz to 8000mhz (max) roughly?

What is the cost of ESXi v4?

Calling VMware to find pricing is crazy. I am a small web development company and there are many large companies fighting for sales time.

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Forums - WHat you are seeing is vSphere's new feature of having a VM with 8 virtual CPUs. This is a feature only available in the Enterprise plus level of licensing. So with the Evaluation licenses everything is unlocked. When you license the Free ESXi all you ge tis the 4 vSMP.

NOw some best practices in regards to vSMP - always start with a single vCPU you can always add additional later. If you must have multi-processor VMs then make sure you have at east two times the number of virtual CPUs uyou plan to have

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[jasongegere]

Best practices in regard to vSMP? Always start with a single vCPU? You mean on my VMs I should select just two from the possible list of 8 and monitor the performance? (2 x dual core | 2 x 2 x 2 = 😎

When I switch to the FREE version I will still have the option to give a VM 8 vCPUs but ESXi will really only give the VM 4?

Where can I find a licensing guide to help me with costs vs. advantages?

[azn2kew]

What David means is that for evaluation license you have 60 days and it has all the features you can test and it allow you with a maximum of 8 vCPU per virtual machine. If you choose to use ESX4i free edition, it will limited to 4 vCPU per virtual machine, which you can choose between 1-4 vCPU allocated to your virtual machines. VMware License support call is free and you can call them up and ask anything you want regarding sales questions. ESX4i is manageable via VIMA, vSphere CLI or automated scriptings otherwise you can connect using vSphere Client. If you need to manage it with other enterprise features you must have vCenter 4.0 server and that requires extra license costs.

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Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[weinstein5]

When you switch to the free license you will be limited to a 4 vCPU VM - no what I mean is when you build a vm you have the option to select 1-4 vCPUs in vSphere select 1 and build the VM and test the workload you are going to run on that VM - if it does not have enough CPU cycles power down and add an additional vCPU. Also remember if the workload is not multi threraded and can not take advantage of multiple processors adding vCPUs will not improve perfomance -

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[weinstein5]

Something else I forgot to post in regards to licensing and cost - check out and http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html

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[fridge]

Jason,

Just wanted to clarify this:

4-way & 8-way vCPU relates to the # of CPU's you can assign to your guest VM's. As mentioned it is generally best practice to start with one vCPU and then add additional vCPU later if the applications on the guest will take advantage of multiple CPU's and if monitoring of the guest suggests it is being constrained by the single vCPU.

From a ESXi host perspective it will use all the processor cores in the server.

Rod

==========================

Rod Gabriel

Wisconsin Area VMUG Leader

VMware vExpert - 2009

[azn2kew]

Even though vSphere 4.0 and ESX 3.5 has better mechanism for relaxed co-scheduling with the CPU resources, but still you should only use 1 vCPU as a best build and then increase to 2vCPU if your applications utilize vSMP features otherwise you will have performance bottleneck since the scheduler has to wait to have enough physical CPU resources to assign your virtual machine requests.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[AlbertWT]

May I know what sort of VM that is best for using 4-way SMP assuming there are 2 CPU sockets of Intel Quadcore Xeon e5400 ?

Kind Regards,

AWT

[Peter_Grant]

It really depends on if your running a heavy multi threading application on the VM. When we do capacity planning exercises we find most servers run at under 10% CPU on average. So unless you have heavy SQL Exch, or other servers that do lots of processing try one. you can always add more later but most of the time you dont need to.

There is an overhead in ESX running more than one vCPU, hence why its best to stick with one.

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Peter Grant

Virtualization Consultant

Xtravirt.com

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[AlbertWT]

OK, great thanks for the suggestion Peter.

Cheers.

Kind Regards,

AWT