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Good Morning,

I have virtualized an exchange server using KVM (proxmox actually). It is Exchange 2010 SP3 running on server 2012 R2. KVM version 1.7.1. I am using the latest (0.1-74) virtio storage and network drivers. Exchange is set up as a single server so the store, transport, and client access are all on one.

The problem I'm having is that windows will report between 5 and 30% CPU usage (40% at most), but Proxmox reports it at a constant 95% CPU utilization. I stumbled on this thread from arstechnica: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1234799

Which reports the same symptoms I'm having, but with SQL Server. The poster solved it with the T8038 flag. Does exchange 2010 have an equivalent internal timer that could be causing this? Or is this something else entirely?

Thanks!

Neil
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  • Off topic a bit. Really just wondering what your experience has been running Exchange on KVM? Hard to find good info on that specific combo. If you don't mind, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I am considering a CentOS-KVM install at a client, and I want to run Exchange on that. My email is in my bio if you wouldn't mind contacting me sharing your thoughts. Thanks! – gregthegeek Nov 16 '14 at 21:14
  • @gregthegeek, it looks like your email isn't listed for me. Sorry for the delay. From what I can tell, it works decently. Disk access is really really choked because it's using iSCSI across a 1Gbps link, but even with that, it ran pretty well for an ~250 user org. IIRC I had to set the processor to a name brand and had to play with number of sockets and number of cores. It was reporting the wrong number of cores initially. Let me know if you have more questions and I'll try to get in touch with you another way. I fixed my email for this site, so I'll see your comment if you tag me. – Neil Dec 05 '14 at 08:22
  • Ah, I guess they set emails as private. I have gregthegeek on my 1stbyte.com email though, try that. Anyway, thanks for that info. We've got about 400 users, and I really like the idea of virtualizing Exchange, and even more so, love the thought of a KVM solution with ZFS storage. We'll be doing a server host build mid-January, it should have 4-5 guests. I'll dedicate a ZFS pool and SAS card just for Exchange, just to keep the IO a bit better. Not going to do any iSCSI, I think I can do better just with a couple ZFS pool internally. Easier anyway, and only a few guests. – gregthegeek Dec 06 '14 at 22:03

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