Groupcall Emerge - Excessive CPU usage on VMWare

[meastaugh1]

I have Groupcall Emerge installed on a 2008R2 VM with 2 sockets/2 cores and 8GB RAM, running SIMS and SQL 2012 Express on ESXi 5.5.

 

When Emerge is running it will loop between using 50% CPU across all 4 cores for approx 3 mins, then drop back to 0% for 1 minute. Left over time, I have seen Emerge's CPU usage go up to 90%. We are not currently writing any data via Emerge, so this is apparently just Emerge polling. Other services/apps (eg SQL) are running normally when Emerge is stopped and not consuming half or more of the CPU time.

 

After several remote sessions, Groupcall have concluded that this is due to an incompatibility with VMWare. Is anyone running Emerge on VMWare VMs, if so do you experience this CPU usage issue? Thanks

[tomearnshaw]

We also run Groupcall Emerge on our Facility server on VMWare. Every couple of weeks we will get a call to say that Facility is running like a dog, only to find that Groupcall is hammering the CPU. I simply end the process and wait for it to happen again.

[jcs808]

We are scheduled to have it installed next Friday. We run on VMWare so I think I need to talk with them. Do you mind if I quote what you've posted when I contact them?

 

 

I have Groupcall Emerge installed on a 2008R2 VM with 2 sockets/2 cores and 8GB RAM, running SIMS and SQL 2012 Express on ESXi 5.5.

 

When Emerge is running it will loop between using 50% CPU across all 4 cores for approx 3 mins, then drop back to 0% for 1 minute. Left over time, I have seen Emerge's CPU usage go up to 90%. We are not currently writing any data via Emerge, so this is apparently just Emerge polling. Other services/apps (eg SQL) are running normally when Emerge is stopped and not consuming half or more of the CPU time.

 

After several remote sessions, Groupcall have concluded that this is due to an incompatibility with VMWare. Is anyone running Emerge on VMWare VMs, if so do you experience this CPU usage issue? Thanks

[zag]

Its fine on Hyper-V

[GREED]

I will run this through the support and development teams today, anything worth mentioning on this issues I will report back. Thanks for highlighting this.

 

Graham

[meastaugh1]

We are scheduled to have it installed next Friday. We run on VMWare so I think I need to talk with them. Do you mind if I quote what you've posted when I contact them?

Sure, feel free.

 

I will run this through the support and development teams today, anything worth mentioning on this issues I will report back. Thanks for highlighting this.

 

Graham

We are not a direct Emerge customer, but our VLE uses Emerge to write back data to the MIS. As a result, any communication I've had from Groupcall support has been through the VLE provider. It's my understanding that Groupcall believe we are the only school to use Emerge on VMWare (and have problems), so I thought it would useful to gauge whether other schools are experiencing problems and just not reporting them.

[GroupcallSupport]

Hi meastaugh1! Thank you for highlighting the issues experienced on VMWare Virtual Machines, both here and to our support team via your VLE provider. Also good to know first-hand zag that you are running on Hyper-V without issue; it’s always very useful to hear from the front-line users.

 

We have over 2,000 Emerge installs, across multiple types of hardware, and this is the first time that this particular issue has been reported so we are keen to provide some help here.

 

When we first looked at the school 3GB RAM was assigned and local cpus were constantly at 100%. To provide a first point of problem diagnosis we requested they up RAM to 8GB. This was done, and following this CPU usage was then at a constant 75%. This indicated, along with known good instances on other virtual machines, that the issue may be related to VMware configuration. We have recommended as a next step to switch from 2 x dual core vCPU’s to a single vCPU with unlimited resourcing; we cannot provide the necessary technical expertise however in VMware to assist with this in any great detail.

 

As you might expect we do not have a direct relationship with VMware so we have therefore recommended the school raise a case with VMware support with which we’d be happy to assist where needed.

 

As a separate incident, where another school had a similar Emerge related/VMware issue. We’ve tried another tack, and requested a separate VM was spun up “Just for Emerge”, specs as follows (4Gb RAM, 1vCpu (dual core: 3.93Ghz), windows 2008, R2 SP1 64 bit), interestingly since this separation of Emerge & SQL on to different servers, CPU usage on either is now well within normal parameters. We can’t comment on this in detail as you hopefully understand, but provide this information in the hope that it will assist the community.

 

If you believe you are affected by issues with VMware, we would encourage you to make use of VMware support or forums etc, however we are happy to assist individual customers where possible. Please contact us on [email protected].

 

Thanks again all, we look forward to hearing your findings.

 

Kind Regards

 

Major Atwal

Support Manager

Groupcall Limited

[PaulBedford1]

I am also having this problem with GroupCall Xporter. I've had to set a schduled task to restart the service daily - short of moving this to it's own VM - which seems an overkill for such a tiny piece of software.

[GREED]

Paul

 

Have you contacted the help desk about this?