4 Dual Core Intel Server 9 VM's all using only 1 CPU why

[richG]

Hi we have two HP Proliant ML370 G5 Servers running

4 Dual core x 2.66Ghz

30Gb of ram on each server

10 NiC's Each server

The problem we are having is one each server the VM's are showing that they are all using CPU 0 and the other three CPU's are doing nothing. CPU 0 is at 100% while the others are runing between 4-5%.

Is there a setting we forgot? It was my understanding that ESX was suppose to balance out the VM's over all the CPU's.

thanks Richard

[Dave_Mishchenko]

It should be balancing over the CPUs. It might be worth checking the settings for a VM (Resources \ Advanced CPU) to ensure that Scheduling Affinity is set to No Affinity.

[richG]

thanks Dave I did check that is Affinity is turned off. What I am wondering is the Hyperthreading in the Server Configuration tab it is telling me that it is enable but not active. So I am assuming that we have not enable hyperthreading in the bios so it is not working correctly does this make sense??

thanks for the feed back Richard

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You might was to disabled hyperthreading and then restart the server. If you do disable it and reboot, how many physical processors / logical processors / processors per core does the server report having?

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=529682&#529682

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=536744&#536744

[richG]

Funny you should bring that question up Dave as after finding this problem I took the time to go over my other servers and found this problem.

Both servers are HP Proliant DL585 G1's with 4Dual Core CPU's 30GB Ram

on the performance Tab one shows all 8 cpu's and one only shows 4 cpu's now this one is a strange one. In the summary tab they both report having 8 CPU's. any suggestions on this one.

The other one we are going to take the servers down and check the bios setting to see if HT is enable. As I did check a couple of other servers that are Intel and they have it enable and are balancing there CPU's perfectly.

Dave thanks very much for the help it is much appreciated.

Richard

[richG]

Yes Dave that did explain the answer to our problem I did do search on the forum for hyperthreading before answering the question. After reading it I spoke to my boss and you think that ESX would be smart enough to know the hardware does not support HT and not enable it by default.

Maybe a suggestion for a update on there side.

thanks agian.

[richG]

Ok Dave for some reason it all came back I see all 8 cpu's now. so I going to close this out as answered.

Look thanks agian for all your help it is greatly appreciated. I find it easier to ask questions here then to have to call support.

"Thanks agian"

Regards, Richard

[richG]

As I have found out that this problem has been answered 8 times before. I feel maybe VM should post this information in there Knowledge base as a known problem and how to resolve it.

Thanks to everyone for there help Dave thanks.

Regards,

Richard

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Glad to hear it's working. If any of my posts were helpful / correct I could use the points (:

Thanks,

Dave