Windows 2008 Guest experiencing High CPU utilization

[pearlyshells]

We recently deployed a few Windows 2008 Standard full guest O/S as VMs. We are seeing High CPU utilization on these VMs. Has anyone else seen this? if so, how have you resolved it? The VMs all have 2GB RAM and dual virtual CPUs

[Jasemccarty]

Try cranking them back to 1 vCPU

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

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[pearlyshells]

tried that one a few of them yesterday.......still high CPU rates

[Rubeck]

Hi Pearly..

You do not mention what version of ESX you're running.. Might help

/Rubeck

[jacerra]

We are seeing the sames issues. ESX 3.5 or 4.0 Windows 2008 VMs performing very slowly. High CPU rates just doing normal tasks. Windows 2003 machines run much faster.

any ideas?

[malaysiavm]

I had experienced the same which win2k8 performed much more slower than win2k3 in VM. To be honest, even a physical server environment, win2k8 are respond slower if compare to win2k3. So I will consider this is normal

For the high cpu utilization, are you able to check on the task manager which process and taken up all the cpu resources?

Craig

vExpert 2009

Malaysia VMware Communities -

[jacerra]

Yes, but its not showing anything. I'm not sure if its related, but I have a 8TB MS SW ISCI initiator connecting my san. when i go to browse the folders, the CPU gets pinned at 100% (in task manager) and esx perf monitor tabs.

[malaysiavm]

you meant you are connecting to the iscsi storage through MS software iscsi initiator on the virtual machine?

Craig

vExpert 2009

Malaysia VMware Communities -

[jacerra]

Yes, for the VM's E disk drive used for File sharing, MS ISCSI to a Equallogic SAN, not the OS drive. Its a Windows 2008 64bit Server with a new build with no apps except file sharing enabled and Symantec Endpoint AV (which is not installed on another identical VM with the same issue). The OS drive is connected to the Vmware storage via HW ISCSI HBA to an Equallogic SAN. in running process explorer its showing that the SVCHOSTS.exe is pinning the CPU. in particular the svchosts.exe is from the FSRMsvc service (file server resource manager service) process creating the CPU load (pinning at 100%) also with Quota management. the VM has 1vcpu and 12GB RAM (running on ESX 4.0 hosts with tons of free resources).

[malaysiavm]

I am not so sure why you want to do this way, although is workable, but in my experience, the performance you gain with this kind of setup should be lower than software or hardware iscsi. If you prefer to direct access to the physical LUN, you can always utilize RDM = Raw Device mapping features in VMware. Maybe you should try the RDM solution and further monitor the virtual machine behavior in this case.

Craig

vExpert 2009

Malaysia VMware Communities -

[Enzote]

Hi, I have the same problem.

This is my environment:

Host: VMware Server 2: On Windows Server 2008 Standard x64

Guest1: Windows Server 2008 Standard x32

Guest2: Windows Server 2008 Standard x32

Both guest have a web .NET application running on them.

There is a 100% CPU usage in each VM. The process is w3wp.exe. It starts when I use the web application.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Enzote