High CPU on Vmware ESX

AdviceIT

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Hi Guys

I have an interesting issue though I think we know what the fix is but want to double check and ensure we are on the right page.

I have a customer who has the following setup:

Dual CPU Quad Core

144GB RAM

Vmware ESX Hypervisor 4.1

1st VM

Windows Server 2008 R2

Running as Domain Controller and File Server

Alloted 30GB RAM and 2 vCPU's in Vmware

2nd VM

Windows 7 Professional

Running http://www.aads-worldwide.hk/ as a Terminal Server

Alloted 110GB RAM and 2vCPU's in Vmware

Customer has around 22 user's who logon to the second box via RDP port 4000 (We changed it from 3389) and use Terminal Services. They use a mix of Outlook, Word, MYOB (only one user), and Adobe Acrobat and some web browsing within the terminal session.

Issue we have had is that the 2nd VM is maxing CPU at 100% constantly (was maxing RAM previously as well but we just bumped the server to max memory).

I noted the other night that we think that the server is running Vmware Hypervisor FREE which only allocated maxiumum 4 vCPU's but I am going to check with Vmware tomorrow with the license key that we have.

We then adjusted the vCPU so that we had 1 vCPU on the 1st VM and 3 on the second and CPU utilisation dropped to 20%.

However this then causes issues with the first box locking up when running backup and a few other processes.

What I want to know is the following:

Should we look at upgrading the box to ESX 6.0 and then getting an enterprise license to unlock the remainder cores? If so will 2 vCPU's allocated to box one and 6 vCPU's or similar on box 2 fix the issue?

How is the licensing for this done? Do you know what the cost may be? Not that familiar with the VMware ESX setup they currently have so looking for some guidance.

Thanks in advance.
 
I would definitely give that remote desktop rig 4 cores....probably more, if for 100 users. Granted the version of ESX is pretty old there, but I'm pretty sure that supported 8 cores and even on the free version you could do up to 4 cores per guest.
When I have terminal servers that have 20 people remote in ...I give them 4 cores.
 
What is the host brand does it affect the other vm

What is disk io

2vcpu is low. Do you want to work on a dual core unit personally?
 
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