Do not use Task Manager in Hyper-V for Processor Measurements
I’m doing another blog post about the processor utilization in a Hyper-V environment because it seems like my last blog post on this subject was misinterpreted.
When Ewan Fairweather and I ran a few BizTalk servers as guest computers to 100% CPU. We brought up Task Manager and it showed very little, if any CPU usage. We thought to ourselves that either Hyper-V has the most efficient use of CPU utilization or there is something wrong. It turns out that the host computer (root partition) is considered just another virtual computer running on the hypervisor. This means that the CPU usage we see in Task Manager is only the CPU usage of the host computer only. Therefore, if you want to know how much CPU utilization your physical processors are really getting, then use the “\Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor(*)\% Total Run Time”. The processor resource is the only resource affected in this way – meaning you can measure memory and network using the normal counters.
Read Tony Voellm’s blog (he is the Hyper-V Performance Lead) at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tvoellm/
I was involved in testing performance of Hyper-V in a Microsoft BizTalk Server environment with Ewan Fairweather and we wrote this article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768535.aspx
Always use the Hyper-V Hypervisor performance counters first!
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About clinth@microsoft.com
I am originally from Dayton, OH. Worked for the Air Force for 6 years. Joined Microsoft in 1999 and moved to Charlotte, NC. There I was a Support Professional and later worked as a Testing Consultant. After 6 years, my wife, daughter and I moved to Seattle, WA where I took a job as a Microsoft Premier Field Engineering (PFE) supporting BizTalk. Throughout my Microsoft career I've always been very passionate about performance analysis, so I have worked hard to make performance analysis easier for our customers. Oh, and I like PC games like Diablo 2 and Fable, cigars, and a nice Chianti.
