hardware interrupts continuously 10% to 20% on VM

[chipperjonesrules]

running esx 3.5

have a windows 2003 server on it that is as slow as molasses in wintertime.

used sysinternals process explorer to see that it is showing continuous CPU of 10% to 20% on hardware interrupts on this VM.

what would cause this on a virtual machine?

 

[mrdenny]

Have you installed the latest VMtools on the guest? Which Update build are you running?

Denny
MVP
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[chipperjonesrules]

we are on 3.5.0 build 81946.

it does have the latest version of vmtools.

VMware asked us to apply patch Install patch esx-2007-08-02--15.27.10414.tgz which addresses multimedia timer issues

havent done that yet, probably have to wait until the weekend.

 

[mrdenny]

You are currently running a pre-Update 1 build. ESX 3.5 has been updated to Update 4 (plus some post update 4 patches).

You should probably update to at least Update 4 (especially since anything older than Update 4 falls out of support soon).

Denny
MVP
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / SQL 2005 BI / SQL 2008 DBA / SQL 2008 DBD / SQL 2008 BI / MWSS 3.0: Configuration / MOSS 2007: Configuration)
MCITP (SQL 2005 DBA / SQL 2008 DBA / SQL 2005 DBD / SQL 2008 DBD / SQL 2005 BI / SQL 2008 BI)

My Blog

 

[NortonES2]

Update 5 now.

-------------------------------

If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!

 

[chipperjonesrules]

we havent updated before, is it very difficult?
any "gotchas" we need to watch out for?

 

[mrdenny]

Oh, didn't know Update 5 was out. Guess it's time to patch our two remaining 3.5 servers.

Chipper, It is a pretty easy process. Upload the zip file to the ESX server, decompress it an run the update script on the host. You'll then need to update the VMware Tools on each guest.

The instructions are on the VMware website.

Denny
MVP
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / SQL 2005 BI / SQL 2008 DBA / SQL 2008 DBD / SQL 2008 BI / MWSS 3.0: Configuration / MOSS 2007: Configuration)
MCITP (SQL 2005 DBA / SQL 2008 DBA / SQL 2005 DBD / SQL 2008 DBD / SQL 2005 BI / SQL 2008 BI)

My Blog