Guest Woolbox Posted September 23, 2008 Posted September 23, 2008 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.
Guest Woolbox Posted September 24, 2008 Posted September 24, 2008 RE: High CPU usage: System -> SRV.SYS / HAL Anyone? Update: Tried uninstalling McAfee antivirus, but it didn't help. "Woolbox" wrote: > 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.
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