I've been testing some software in a server virtual environment and I've noticed I get a huge amount of CPU usage on the Interrupts process.
My question is, how does this relate to the virtual hardware platform as the rate is allot lower in a real system. Some how the hypervizor scheduler works hard to over come this problem but not as well as on real hardware does.
Obvious things are high I/O and disk access but this application mostly just sits and works in memory allot.
If anyone has experienced the same, please let me know. thanks in advance
Screenshot: Process Explorer alt text http://web5.twitpic.com/img/18819358-a20408f0a63a49a012562a18de70f829.4a66ebd3-full.jpg
Have you read the VM's CPU usage from the guest or the host? Guest CPU usage figures are inherently wrong.
Other than that make sure you've removed any unnecessary virtual hardware like floppies/serial ports etc. and make sure you're on the latest vmtools.
This VM wasn't created through a P2V migration by any chance? If so make sure that the latest VMware tools are installed and that there are no drivers left from the physical hardware or software related to the hardware such as management agents.
In my years of working at home with W2003 server, Enterprise mostly, i found out that the hard part is to find answers, problems are there where you don't expect them. In this case i had msmpeng.exe shooting in the 100% during transfer files to the server and now it is interrupts when i want to read from the server. This hardware is an old Compaq EN series pc with P4 1.00ghz with 4 GB memory. As a SATA harddisk solution i use a pci, 3 ports raid-3 XFX-card. In this machine, and with this same config, i had a single disk as the C-disk, until there was a bad spot on this 10 year old datacarrier. I had to reformat it, (IDE) and bought a second HD and mirrored it for sure. I started to install W2003 server on it, i downloaded SP1, SP2 and installed it on the server, Then i updated everything, and in the end i gained acces to the RAID-3 disk, i made sure the server admin had all the rights. Well, since this problem i read here on this board, i had it before, but it is so unpredictable wether it is the disk where the system resides, or the data (raid), or is it the old hardware, or the network? In this way i can't really tell. Until i have the money to buy a good datastorage for my medialibrary, i'll keep trying to find the cause. I have a similar pc, and i think i'm going to testrun this pc and elevate it to server, see if the problem reoccurs. I'm sorry that i can't give you a straight answer, even Microsoft can't give it, there are so much factors. I say, try to reinstall a fresh server on a replacement harddisk in the same configuration, maybe that'll help.
Ps. currently copying a 6,5 GB file from server to pc, well, a 11Mbit wireless connection is faster!