Getting alarms over Virtual Center about a VM CPU utilization being maxout

[vmquestions0]

Hi,

We have a VM running on ESX 3.5 and we are getting alarms over Virtual Center about the CPU utilization being maxout

Is there anyway to solve this problem increasing the number of CPU's or through anything else?

Please advise.

Thank you.

[DSTAVERT]

Find out what processes in the VM are causing the CPU load. In Windows view the Task manager to find out what process is using the CPU and the Event log for errors. In Linux use top and logs.

[vmquestions0]

Basically the CPU peaks out when the server a job is executed. The server is hosting an application and once every day a pretty big job runs to get some data when this process is running the CPU peaks and we get alerts.

We are looking for some ways to improve the performance of the CPU unless this is something that can't be done performed.

The application is not SQL, Exchange etc...this an specific application provided by a vendor which I don't think that the app is multi-threading aware.

Like I said the CPU only peaks when the job is being lauched and until the job is completed so I wonder if sice this is just temporary it will be ok.

Can we add more vCPU to solve this problem? If so, how do we manage to add more vCPU?

Thank you.

[DSTAVERT]

How long does it last? If it consumes 100% CPU for a period of time say several hours then you might consider adding a CPU to see if it will help but unless it is a decently written app you might not see any change. Does it affect other VMs? What is the disk and networking load during the time the app is working? Have you checked with the app creator for suggestions. If this is a short duration problem i.e. the app runs for 10 minutes every 2 hours and there doesn't appear to be any adverse affect on any other VM then perhaps consider relaxing the CPU warning period. Extend the time the CPU on that VM can consume more than so much percent before a warning is issued.