In this scenario we spun up 4 Primary Servers (SLES10 SP2) on VMware ESX 3.5.4 and began configuring our closest server rules, Content Replication Settings, etc. As we drove along, the three of us thought we are having some performance issues......We were kind of lost so we called Novell and they recommended that we give the VMI Kernel a try especially since each server at 4 CPU's and 6GB of RAM. Once we updated the kernel we bounced the servers and things were still very slow. Most of us are fairly new to Linux so bare with me...We continued troubleshooting and realized that jsvc, which we learned is tomcat and java, were pegging the cpu's at 100% after novell-zenloader completed. We tried everything inside VMware ESX...Even the frontline ZENworks guys were a little stumped.
So, to make a longer story short. Novell set up a meeting with one of their ZCM Developers the next morning. He logged in and began troubleshooting the situation. After a couple of hours he found that there is a documented bug with java and jsvc on VMware 3.5.4. The Novell SE told us to bring each server down to 1 cpu and things would begin working as designed. He was correct. We changed each guest to 1 cpu and we gained our performance back. This "Should" be fixed in VMware ESX 3.5.5. Anyways, this was a VERY painful process especially when you are moving from ZENworks for Desktops, however with the expertise of Novell Engineers and their desire to help us, we are fixed and the ZCM Migration can continue.
Thanks to Novell for going above and beyond for us. Again, the problem was NOT ZCM 10.2......Thanks for reading. I hope this may save at least one person from the situation I had to be in! Peace.
Thank you. We did have a case open with the SLES Team as well, who encouraged us to use the other kernel. Either way, please know that it was a TOUGH week, getting through it was amazing by itself. So, between all of us collaborating we can help our peers be successful!
Peace,
Norm O'Neal Team NTEG Novell Users Group of Indiana (NUGI)
I would counter your post a bit. There are known issues between java apps and the SLES vmi kernel / paravirtualization under ESX. We run multiple vCPUs on our ZCM 10.2 install but do not use the vmi kernel just fine.