I have two standalone SQL boxes in a 2 host ESX cluster. At the moment they are running on the same host.
We take nightly backups using Veeam. One of these servers spikes to 90-100% CPU for the duration of the backup. The other doesn't.
I built both boxes, admittedly some time apart, but I'm pretty sure I'd set them up identically. The base disks are running on the same array, separate LUN provisioned as a dedicated SQL vmfs datastore and both are backing up to the same destination. The Veeam proxy is the same for each. Veeam is configured for Direct SAN (and it looks like it's working).
The server that doesn't have poor performance is the box that works the hardest. During the day with nothing special going on it is at a constant 30% CPU. The server we are having problems with will normally sit at a few % of CPU use at equivalent times.
- Both are Server 2012 running SQL 2012 Std
- Both are 8 core
- One has 16GB, one has 24GB RAM (pretty sure this isn't related, we're not seeing swapping/paging issues).
- Both have updated tools running
I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to progress this, I don't really understand what first needs investigating at this point. I've ruled out (in my mind) storage, hardware, network and I can't see what at OS level would be the cause of the issues I see.
I assume there is some interaction between the problematic SQL box and ESXi that isn't happy, but I just don't know where to start.
Any thoughts?
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