Determining the number of virtual processors for a CPU

central-processing-unithyper-v-server-2008-r2virtualization

I have a Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter with the Hyper-V role enable. I am planning to run 11 VMs (each with 4 vCPU) on this host. There is 1 CPU installed on the host computer. I would like to find out the number of virtual processors that can be supported on this host using this CPU, Intel Xeon Processor E5-2690

  • CPU count = 1
  • Core count (AKA logical processors) = 8
  • Virtual processors = 64?

Best Answer

There is no hard proportion between virtual and physical cores. Of course, the very idea behind virtualization is that you overcommit resources (especially CPUs) to prevent vacancies of expensive and power-consuming hardware, but how many vCPUs you would be able to run on your hardware would depend on your load.

Start with an overcommit factor of 4-8, monitor the load and migrate virtual machines away as you see average usage values climbing over 70% of your total CPU capacity for prolonged periods of time (15-30 minutes) as this would indicate a CPU bottleneck.