Virtual Cores on Virtual servers for AGS 10.1

[AdrianMarsden]

Hi

WE have AGS 10.1, of course on Server 2008R2.  Running on a virtual server.  Our server guys tell me there is a debate as to whether or not giving virtual servers multiple cores has any  benefit.  Apparently, they say, it is all down to the software, not only must be able to multi-thread, but also must be aware of the fact that it is on a Virtual server.

What are peoples feelings/experience here on the matter?

Cheers

ACM

[LeoDonahue]

I'd point them to the VMware Infrastructure guide for ESRI: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmw-hp-enterprise-virtual-array-family-vsphere-configurati...  http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10091/

[AdrianMarsden]

Ta- we read through that some time ago, but things have move on a lot since then - ArcGIS for Server is no only 64 bit and VMWare has gone through a few changes too. _ i'm not sure if tere was any hard conclusion over multi core vs single core.

Anyone got any recent real world experiance?

[LeoDonahue]

Ta?

So, essentially, you're wasting your money by purchasing any physical server with multicores if you're planning on installing ArcGIS Server on it, assuming your server admin have the premise that multicores in a VM provide no benefit.  Do they think multicores on a physical server provide benefit or no benefit?

Can you even buy a server or workstation today with a single core/processor?  Tell them to get over it and provision the virtual cpu. What are they saving them for?

[brianscholl]

Having multiple cores definitely helps, but it also is depends on how many were purchased from ESRI.

We are on ESX 4.1 and ArcGIS Server 9.3 with 4 vCPUs.  Compared with our test server with only 2 vCPUs makes a big difference.

Using virtualization technology does not aggregate the CPU power.  For each clock cycle you are allowing that specific Virtual Machine access to (n) number of CPU threads.  

ArcGIS Server is multi-threaded, you can see this by looking at the running processes.  You should notice many ArcSOC.exe process which depends on how many services you have created, the OS will assign each process to a CPU.

Our new 10.1 environment will have two machines each with 4 vCPUs (we pay for 8 cores from ESRI), both machines under the same site.