DL-380 G3 w/ Win2k shows 4 processors

[Jeff Marshall]

I have 4 servers deployed at a POP at the other side of the world (manila) and 4 here in the US. The 4 in the US are being impacted by load where the 4 in manila are running excellent under virtually the same request load. We bought the 8 of them same time, same place, same quote, same order, same integrator, same OS, same services. The 4 in the US (which I can immeditatly get my hands on) show 2 processors. The 4 in manila show 4 processors. We bought 2 processors and the DL-380 G3 line only holds 2 processors. Anyone ever seen an OS show 4 processors in Windows task manager, winmsd and perf mon while there was only 2 that existed?

I'll be having someone reboot the server locally and tell me what the BIOS says but this requires a paperwork fiasco so it will take a few days. Just pinging the experts here.

/Jeff

[Fatih Celebi]

Hi,

It's probably because hyperthreading is turned on on those servers. Then you se every physical processor as 2 virtual processors even though Win2k can not benefit from it. With Win2k3 and WinXP you do have a sligt performance benefit of running with hyperthreading. So if you are using only Win2k Server you could turn hyperthreading off in the Bios settings to get rid of the confusion.

Se the link for more info
http://www.intel.com/technology/hyperthread/

/Fatih

[Ron_161]

Jeff,

Fatih is 100% correct. You can enable/disable hyperthreading(ht)through bios. HT is a great technology and you will get much greater system performance on your US servers if you enable this in bios.

[Jeff Marshall]

Excellent (and timely) information. Thank you both very much - this appears to be the direction to look into.

/Jeff