CPU load with HyperThreading

[caustic386]

I'm running UT 8.1.1 on a quad core PowerEdge 1850. this machine has Hyper Threading enabled - does that mean my load is at 100% when it's at 4.00 or 8.00?

[scimanal]

You will be at 100% at 8.00 You will be at a "high" load at 4.00 since that is the number of real cores. I would try to load that box such that 4.00 and above is seen only during peak with average at 2.0 or lower. Usually UT just hums along so I would be surprised if the CPU was too high.

[caustic386]

Thanks for that - do the daily reports show CPU time, or would I be better off monitoring via SNMP?

[sky-knight]

Hyperthreading doesn't really help Untangle much. The extra cores are what help.

[caustic386]

So, if I understand right, 8.00 load is *technically* %100 CPU utilization, but 98% of REAL CPU is between 0-4.00?

So far we're averaging 1.7, but I'm unable to push my connection past 38Mb - without UT it is 50Mb steady, with bursts as high as 90Mb (according to SpeakEasy's speed test).

[95vr6man]

Try using other speed tests.. My 50mb connection shows around 30-40 on speakeasy but is actually able to do full speed. Maybe at a non peak time, try to download a (legal) torrent with a lot of seeds and see what speed you get.. this should simulate lots of user connections with pretty high speed. Also, your ISP might offer a speed testing server.

What type of network cards are you using? I know untangle works better with some cards than others. Also, do you have lots of internal traffic crossing networks/subnets using the untangle as the router? This could cause congestion as well.

[caustic386]

Excellent idea - I was able to download 2GB from usenet at 50Mb steady, with an average load of ~3.00.

For anyone else's reference, this is a PowerEdge 1850 with 2x dual core 2.8 Xeon (800Mhz FSB), onboard NICs (probably broadcom), 14GB RAM in bridge mode.

Thanks for the assist!