We have VMWare server 2.0 installed on a few servers for testing purposes. In fact, our entire development infrastructure is on 3 different VMWare server 2 servers.<\/p>\n
One of the guest OSes was running Windows 2003 Enterprise R2 SP2 with a SQL server (2005 of Microsoft) and a web server (IIS6). The system process ended up using anywhere from 20 to 75% of the CPU usage. So what was causing this?<\/p>\n
I started with the usual suspects – services that shouldn’t have been running. Nothing helped on that end.<\/p>\n
Then I grabbed a copy of Sysinternals’ ProcessExplorer. It showed that I had anywhere from 20 to 75% use from Interrupts\/Hardware Interrupts. What exactly is a hardware interrupt? It is when a piece of hardware needs to wait for the CPU in order to finish it’s task. If you’re using a CD-ROM drive in PIO mode instead of DMA you will see quite a few more hardware interrupts. But I wasn’t using a CD-ROM. It was just an idle server.<\/p>\n
Quick search around the block and I removed the USB controller on the VMWare config side. That lowered the interrupts by about 8%. Not a heck of a lot, but it was something.<\/p>\n
Then I took the advice of another technician – change out the generic AMD flavor of network card for the more robust Intel driver.<\/p>\n
Download the intel driver (http:\/\/support.intel.com\/support\/network\/sb\/cs-006120.htm<\/a>)
\nShutdown your VMWare guest OS
\nEdit the .vmx file
\nAdd Ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000” somewhere in the ethernet ‘section’
\nTurn your machine back on
\nYour machine will now find new hardware. If it doesn’t auto install that’s no big deal since you downloaded the drivers already and you can then install them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nNow my interrupts are below 30 with an average around 12. That’s quite a bit more usable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have VMWare server 2.0 installed on a few servers for testing purposes. In fact, our entire development infrastructure is on 3 different VMWare server 2 servers. One of the guest OSes was running Windows 2003 Enterprise R2 SP2 with a SQL server (2005 of Microsoft) and a web server (IIS6). The system process ended … Continue reading VMWare Server High Processor Usage<\/span>