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David_Broaddus_'s avatar
David_Broaddus_
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Jul 25, 2017

BIG-IP VE CPU Configuration

In the BIG-IP® Virtual Edition and VMware ESXi setup guide for version 12.1, the document specifies that in "VMware ESXi 5.5 and later, do not set the number of virtual sockets to more than 2."

 

What I am wondering is if anyone knows the consequences of running more than two virtual sockets on a BIG-IP VE appliance?

 

BIG-IP
devops
LTM
  • David_Broaddus_'s avatar
    David_Broaddus_
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    Jul 25, 2017

    More info:

     

    We recently converted from some ageing physical appliances and since we went live we have seen an increase in response times from a web service that has a sub-second SLA. Mostly ping times to the web service from outside the LTM are around a millisecond, put periodically they'll climb to as much as 200-300 milliseconds. My first instinct was that we might have a CPU scheduling issue at the VMWare layer, so I set CPU reservations but that didn't impact the problem. During further investigation I ran across the discrepancy in the number of sockets. I plan on changing the config to 2 dual core virtual sockets during our next maintenance window, but I'm still curious if anyone has any idea about what performance would be like in current conditions.