VMWare/FMServer & multiple CPU problems

[BrentHedden]

We setup FMServer Advanced 11 on a VMWare virtual server environment. There are on average 40 users logged into the system. We've noticed that for some reason assigning the server two CPUs is much slower overall (navigation/find requests/etc) for the users than just assigning one CPU. There is 8 gigs of memory assigned.

Which would be just fine, but we're noticing that the Admin Console is abruptly stopping and the files are no longer being hosted. It's a problem with the module ntdll.dll, which is documented in other posts. After calling up FM support, they pointed out that only one CPU is being assigned, and the minimum specs are for two, and this could be the cause. I doubt it, but we've got nothing else to go on with this.

But we can't switch it over to two CPUs, because of the slower user experience as mentioned before. We're presuming that this is some kind of settings with VMWare, and we're just not switching the right switches. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Has anyone been successful in running FMServer 11 on VMWare in a production environment?

[lyndonjonmartin]

Ive run FMSA 11, FMP11 on two different virtual platforms namely VMWare & Virtuozzo each one was configured different however each instance did require minor tweaking initially to get FMSA11 working.

Questions

1 - x64 or x86 OS

2 - What OS version

3 - What service pack & build?

4 - Are you running any type of environmental manager simple to AppSense?

5 - Have you over subscribed on resource(s) on your vm platform i.e CPU, Memory, Disk I/O e.t.c?

6 - Is the database solution been run as web-based platform?

7 - Clear the JAVA cache here is how: http://www.java.com/en/download/help/plugin_cache.xml **NB Test this on a non-production VM instance 1st

Attached is the basic configuration of my VMware instance that runs FMSA11 & FMP11

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System Information

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Time of this report: 3/31/2010, 11:59:05

Machine name: XXXXX

Operating System: Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (5.2, Build 3790) Service Pack 2

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: VMware, Inc.

System Model: VMware Virtual Platform

BIOS: PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0

Processor: Intel® Xeon® CPU X5365 @ 3.00GHz, ~3.0GHz

Memory: 2048MB RAM

Page File: 1327MB used, 2616MB available

Windows Dir: C:XXXXX

DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

DX Setup Parameters: Not found

DxDiag Version: 5.03.3790.3959 32bit Unicode