W
Woolbox
Guest
Dear Experts! 
I've been troubleshooting performance problems on a particular server for a
few days now and cannot quite figure this one out.
Environment
* The server used to be a physical one, was virtualized using VMWare
Converter and now running on VMWare Server 1.0.6.
* Host machine runs on Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise with SP2 and
has two dual-core Intel 3.2 GHz processors and has 8 GB RAM
* Host machine currently hosts the problematic server only
Symptoms and attempts to resolve
When copying (larger) files from the server, approx. CPU utilization rises
to 50%, slowing down the server.
Process Explorer reveals that the offending process is "System", under which
"srv.sys!WorkerThread" consumes the majority of CPU ressources.
Ran KernRate (Kernrate_i386_XP.exe -s 5 -j
srv**http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols) which showed to modules
consuming approx. 50% each of the total consumption: "intelppm" and "hal".
Disabled the IntelPPM service and rebooted. Then ran KernRate again, zooming
into the "hal" module (Kernrate_i386_XP.exe -s 5 -j
srv**http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols -z hal -f). Here is the top
modules under the "hal" module:
----- Zoomed module hal.dll (Bucket size = 16 bytes, Rounding Down) --------
Percentage in the following table is based on the Total Hits for this Zoom
Module
Time 1332 hits, 25000 events per hit --------
Module Hits msec %Total Events/Sec
HalProcessorIdle 737 5000 23 % 3685000
WRMSR 737 5000 23 % 3685000
READ_PORT_BUFFER_UCHAR 482 5000 15 % 2410000
READ_PORT_ULONG 482 5000 15 % 2410000
READ_PORT_USHORT 482 5000 15 % 2410000
(the rest of the modules are 2% or less)
I've tried adding a second virtual CPU, switching HAL between Standard PC,
MPS and ACPI to no avail.
Why is 1/4 of the cPU cycles used by HAL apparently used for idleing? What
is WRMSR, READ_PORT_BUFFER_UCHAR, READ_PORT_ULONG and READ_PORT_USHORT and
why do they use so many CPU cycles just for copying files?
I have no idea where to go from here! :-(
Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated!
Let me know if you need additional info.
I've been troubleshooting performance problems on a particular server for a
few days now and cannot quite figure this one out.
Environment
* The server used to be a physical one, was virtualized using VMWare
Converter and now running on VMWare Server 1.0.6.
* Host machine runs on Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise with SP2 and
has two dual-core Intel 3.2 GHz processors and has 8 GB RAM
* Host machine currently hosts the problematic server only
Symptoms and attempts to resolve
When copying (larger) files from the server, approx. CPU utilization rises
to 50%, slowing down the server.
Process Explorer reveals that the offending process is "System", under which
"srv.sys!WorkerThread" consumes the majority of CPU ressources.
Ran KernRate (Kernrate_i386_XP.exe -s 5 -j
srv**http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols) which showed to modules
consuming approx. 50% each of the total consumption: "intelppm" and "hal".
Disabled the IntelPPM service and rebooted. Then ran KernRate again, zooming
into the "hal" module (Kernrate_i386_XP.exe -s 5 -j
srv**http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols -z hal -f). Here is the top
modules under the "hal" module:
----- Zoomed module hal.dll (Bucket size = 16 bytes, Rounding Down) --------
Percentage in the following table is based on the Total Hits for this Zoom
Module
Time 1332 hits, 25000 events per hit --------
Module Hits msec %Total Events/Sec
HalProcessorIdle 737 5000 23 % 3685000
WRMSR 737 5000 23 % 3685000
READ_PORT_BUFFER_UCHAR 482 5000 15 % 2410000
READ_PORT_ULONG 482 5000 15 % 2410000
READ_PORT_USHORT 482 5000 15 % 2410000
(the rest of the modules are 2% or less)
I've tried adding a second virtual CPU, switching HAL between Standard PC,
MPS and ACPI to no avail.
Why is 1/4 of the cPU cycles used by HAL apparently used for idleing? What
is WRMSR, READ_PORT_BUFFER_UCHAR, READ_PORT_ULONG and READ_PORT_USHORT and
why do they use so many CPU cycles just for copying files?
I have no idea where to go from here! :-(
Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated!
Let me know if you need additional info.
