Windows Terminal Server 100% CPU utilisation

[pdarcysgi]

I have 3 terminal servers running 2003 SP2 Terminal server on ESX 3.5 update 2.

The virtual machines spec if 2vCPUs 2GB of RAM. The CPU hits 100% on all 3 VMs a number of times daily but the machines only have 25 concurrent users on them using office and internet explorer?

I have read the best practices and made sure the VM had a multiprocessor CPU driver and disabled the com ports.

Any other tips?

[SuryaVMware]

Can you let us know what is the ESX server configuration like? That will really help us determin where could the problem be. Also let us know if you have enabled any affinity settings at all on any of these VMs.

-Surya

[pdarcysgi]

Yes the ESX hosts are Dual Quad core 3.0ghz with 16GB of Ram. Hosts aren't perticularly populated and currently only using about 1/2 of the memory and 30% of the resources?

No affinity have been setup on the virtula machines as of yet?

[SuryaVMware]

so when you mean 30 % of the resources I am assuming that it is utilizing close to 30 % of host CPU too. in that case you are seeing an issue with in the guest not at all on the host. Please correct me if i am wrong.

You could try these following things one at a time coz we would love to know which one has fixed the issue.

workload="TerminalServices"

monitor.idleLoopSpinUS = "n" where n can be any thing between 100 - 4000

-Surya

[SuryaVMware]

Any luck with this one ?? Let me know if any of these parameter changes has fixed the issue.

-Surya

[mcowger]

I dunno much about Terminal Services, but 30 active users running browsers and office on 2 CPUs seems like plenty of work, enought o drive the CPU to 100%....

--Matt

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Your post has been moved to the Performance forum.

Dave Mishchenko

VMware Communities User Moderator

[gilly05]

I am having the same problem. We have a total of about 50 users who are running on our terminal servers. We had them split up about evenly, but the CPU utlization skyrockets to 100%. This is in the guest OS, not ESXi. But, I don't see any reason why we should be taking this type of performance hit. Assume 30 users per system with Office and IE... TS is supposed to handle way more than that.

I am curious if anyone can tell me what their exprience is in this regard.

Thanks,

Kyle

[pdarcysgi]

This is what we are seeing now from our tests.

Virtual Machines with the following config

2GB Ram, 1CPU we have applied the following Workload="TerminalServices" and sched.mem.maxmemctl=0 .

What we have founds is that we have now put an extra 5 citrix servers into the farm but I suppose we expected to have more VM servers than physical so this is ok.

We found that the winlogon.exe often spiked the 100% CPU on these servers and long delays for the logon process which we still haven't resolved but the user experience once logged on is just a in the physical world.

[SuryaVMware]

Pdarcysgi,

What version of Ctirix is this? and did you change the HAL to ACPI HAL after you fall back to 1 vCPU from 2 vCPUs ?

Coz incorrect HAL causes a lot of performance problem with windows VMs.

-Surya

[SuryaVMware]

Kyle,

What is the VM configuration? and what is taking the CPU? did you usethe workload option as specified earlier in this thread?

Did you disable serial, Parllel and any other unnecessary devices? You can also choose to disconnect CDROM and Floppy drives when not in use.

What is the version of Citrix you are using?

-Surya