[PDF] Parallels Server 5 Bare Metal

Managing Resources
Configuring CPU Affinity for Virtual Machines and Containers
If your physical server has several processors installed, you can bind a virtual machine or Container
to specific CPUs so that only these CPUs are used to handle the processes running in the virtual
machine or Container. The feature of binding certain processes to certain CPUs is known as CPU
affinity. Establishing CPU affinity between virtual machines and Containers and physical processors
can help you increase your system performance up to 20%.
By default, any newly created virtual machine and Container can consume the CPU time of all
processors installed on the physical server. To bind a virtual machine or Container to specific
CPUs, you can use the --cpumask option of the pctl set command. Assuming that your
physical server has 8 CPUs, you can make the processes in the MyVM virtual machine and
Container 101 run on CPUs 0, 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6 by running the following commands:
# pctl set MyVM --cpumask 0,1,3,4-6
The VM has been successfully configured.
# pctl set 101 --cpumask 0,1,3,4-6 --save
Saved parameters for Container 101
You can specify the CPU affinity mask—that is, the processors to bind to virtual machines and
Containers—as separate numbers (0,1,3) or as ranges (4-6). If you are setting the CPU affinity
mask for a running virtual machine or Container, the changes are applied on the fly.
To undo the changes made to the MyVM virtual machine and Container 101 and set their processes
to run on all available CPUs on the server, run these commands:
# pctl set MyVM --cpumask all
The VM has been successfully configured.
# pctl set 101 --cpumask all --save
Saved parameters for Container 101
Managing Disk Quotas
This section explains the basics of disk quotas, defines disk quota parameters, and describes how
to perform the following disk quota related operations:
• turning on and off per-Container (first-level) disk quotas
• setting up first-level disk quota parameters for a Container
• turning on and off per-user and per-group (second-level) disk quotas inside a Container
• setting up second-level quotas for a user or for a group
• checking disk quota statistics
• cleaning up Containers
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