I recently bought a VPS and am in contact with their support about this issue, but I would also like to get an expert opinion from here.
It's a fully updated Windows Server 2008 R2 VPS hosted on VmWare ESXi 5.
In order to test the disk speed on the VPS I have tried copying large files around on the different partitions. I am getting speeds of around 30Mb/s between them which I think is decent, however when I'm copying files the CPU is also being hit hard across all 4 cores with the System process accounting for about 50% of it. When the copying stops the CPU goes back to 0% load.
This might be a duplicate of this thread, maybe its the same problem here?
It's just weird that the server is at 0-1% when I'm not copying and holding at 40-80% when I copy. If it's the same as in the other thread I linked, it sounds like I should have a constant high load.
What could be the cause of this, and what should I ask the provider to do/ test?
Copying files takes system resources. Also recall that you're measuring from within the VM. It's not the most accurate assessment.
Much of this depends on how the VPS provider designed the virtual infrastructure. I would be less concerned about big file copies and try to gauge speed using actions representative of what the server is going to be doing day-to-day. If it's just hosting websites, then the increased CPU usage from moving files around may not matter. If this is a database system, it may matter...
At this point, follow through on your existing ticket with the provider.