Performance issue VM vs hardware

[td9857]

Hello, I am hoping to get some advice on an application issue.

I have an in house application that runs very well in hardware but when I migrated the application into VMware I see a significant performance hit (CPU)

The hardware is an x3550 dual proc quad core 2.3GHZ; 2 GB ram. Each application is using 1 core and 23 - 25 MB of ram total CPU usage 10 - 20 %

Esx server x3850 quad core. The guest OS is windows 2003 64bit setup to use 4 CPU's and 768 MB. CPU usage total is 40-75% and minimum memory usage Memory looks the same in HW as it does in VM.

The hardware servers do twice the work as VM servers in the same time frame. We have about 20 of these application servers that I would like to migrate to vm.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

[Troy_Clavell]

try reducing your CPU count to a single CPU, you may be suprised with just how well it will perform.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Do you have anything else running on your ESX host? It's best to start with a single vCPU VM and move up from there. Should you change the vCPU count to one, make sure to update the HAL as well. Are you running just a single instance of your app within the VM?

[td9857]

Thank you for your help

I have dropped the CPU's to 1 and will continue to monitor. I originally had the server setup to 2 CPU but we were experiencing high CPU usage over 80% and back logs of data processing.

Initially CPU spiked to 100% still receiving spikes of 100% but not for a prolonged time frame.

Currently have 2 of the loaders in vmware on different esx servers (same model). We are running 4 applications on each server same as in the hardware test. Normally we run 8 applications in hardware.

The esx server that has the 1 CP loader machine has 6 other vim's running. They are low processing vm's (file and print, web servers, dev application servers)

[Troy_Clavell]

...sounds good! Remember what Dave said to ensure your HAL matches the CPU. In device manager, click on the plus sign by computer and see if you are using a uni or multi processor. If it says uni, that may have been some of the performance issues you were seeing. Now that you have a single vCPU it matches the HAL. If you go to more than 1 vCPU, make sure the HAL is updated as well.

Now for the shameless self promotion.... please consider awarding points for helpful/correct answers

[td9857]

Thank you for your help Troy

I did give your credit.

Tim Dickson

Tim.Dickson@expeditors.com

"For Intel Systems support requests, please use the 'Intel Helpdesk' email address only after trying to resolve the issue through your Local IS, Regional IS and ISC staff."

Troy Clavell <communities-emailer@vmware.com>

09/03/2008 11:34 AM

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Tim <tim.dickson@expeditors.com>

cc

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New message: "Performance issue VM vs hardware"

Tim,

A new message was posted in the thread "Performance issue VM vs hardware":

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