Hyper-V NUMA Configuration + Quad Channel Q'

[bigdogchris]

I recently picked up a Dell PE 720R with dual Xeon CPU's (6/12) with Server 2008R2. I currently run 4 VMs in Hyper-V on it but can see myself going up to 8-10 in the future. I currently have about 7GB of ram allocated to VM's (1/1/1/4) All VM's are fairly low processor/memory utilization (print servers, etc).

1 - For some reason I thought the system was only triple channel, so I only purchased 3 (3x4GB) dimms per processor, but it's actually quad channel. How vital is it that I get the system up to quad channel?

2 - My other question is NUMA node configurations. Perf mon is telling me I have 2 numa nodes with 12processors and 12GB each. However, I don't know how to find what node each VM is in. I do have NUMA spanning on. How can I properly configure the server NUMA nodes for future VM considerations? From my readings it seems Microsoft seems to think you should not worry about it and allow HyperV to manage it.

 

[pjkenned]

For the cost of the box, I would buy a few dollars worth of extra 4GB DIMMs.

 

[Grentz]

From my readings it seems Microsoft seems to think you should not worry about it and allow HyperV to manage it.

Yep. Unless you have performance issues, I would not worry about it.

I have found no issues with just letting Hyper-V do the lifting.

Especially if you are running modern Windows VMs, I have found Hyper-V requires very minimal tweaking out of the box, just set it up and let it run.

 

[bigdogchris]

Especially if you are running modern Windows VMs, I have found Hyper-V requires very minimal tweaking out of the box, just set it up and let it run.

The VM's are 2008R2 Enterprise, so integration is installed out of the box.

 

[-Dragon-]

I'd do hyper-v 2012 if I were you, Hyper-V 3 has better support for pretty much everything.

 

[sam-sgc]

Agreed on hyperv 3, so much better it's not even funny.