VM Sweet Spot Config

[AustinPowered]

My home lab has a server I use to host various VM's. At the moment I have some unused capacity to dedicate to FAH. The server is a SuperMicro rack server with dual Xeon X5650 (12 cores) and 72GB of RAM. I know this isn't a very powerful box but every little bit helps.

I started with one VM with one core and 1 GB of RAM. Once I got it running I cloned it and started another VM with 2 cores and 8GB of RAM. Both systems only used a peak of 50% CPU until I added a second CPU slot to each. Now they both run at 100% CPU. Neither system is using much of the RAM provided. The single-core 1GB VM reports just over 2000 PPD while the dual-core 8GB VM is doing around 7000 PPD.

I'm trying to find information about how to configure a given VM for the best return. Do I add cores to these VM's or spin up more VM's. Memory doesn't seem to be a factor but there must be a minimum.

I'm hoping to find the sweet spot for a few small systems instead of one big one. Then I can scale capacity as needed. I have a Docker Swarm. Has anyone tried working with containers?

Thanks,
AustinPowered
Team: Linux For Everyone

[extide]

Use one VM with as many cores as you are willing to spare and then make sure the client running on that VM is using all of them. I would suggest a Linux VM for this, but Windows will work as well. The VM should be fine with 4GB of RAM. I believe there are Docker containers for the FAHClient as well -- or you can pretty non-invasively run it directly on the host a well and adjust the amount of CPU cores it gets as needed.

[PantherX]

Welcome to the F@H Forum AustinPowered,

Just note that if you cloned a VM after it started processing a WU, the CLientID would be cloned which would cause issues for you. As extide mentioned, the best VM is a Linux one with as much CPUs as you can spare with 4 GBs or 8 GBs of RAM. Do keep in mind that heat generation and power usage will increase as CPU folding is rather intensive.

[Neil-B]

And do a quick search for large primes on these forums the are certain core counts to avoid