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Server consolidation
Figure 15 represents the CPU utilization and power utilized by the
server at various numbers of virtual machines under a full load. The
bar graph represents CPU utilization, and the line graph represents
power utilized by the server. The horizontal axis represents the
number of virtual machines, and the left vertical axis and right
vertical axis represent the scale for CPU utilization and power
utilization, respectively.
Since the server has 24 cores, we started with 24 virtual
machines, all of them configured identically as mentioned
earlier. As we can see from the graph, for identical 24 virtual
machines the total average CPU utilization was a little more
than 40 percent, and power utilized was about 665 watts.
As the server is not fully utilized, the number of virtual machines
was scaled up to 40. At 40 virtual machines the CPU utilization
was about 90 percent, and power utilized was about 725 watts.
Even at 90 percent utilization there was no impact on the in-game
latency or gaming experience. But in ESL’s current native envi-
ronment, ESL tries to limit the CPU utilization per server around
60–80 percent. ESL needs this head room as there can be situa-
tions where some game servers need more resources. Therefore,
it was decided that 36 virtual machines is the optimal number as
the CPU utilization and power utilization are 75 percent and 710
watts, respectively.
Below is the quote from “Kapio,” a professional gamer who
actually played Counter-Strike on the virtual machines. He
did not see any difference as compared to native.
“ Playing on virtualized game servers running on
Intel and VMware technologies gives professional
gamers no disadvantages compared with playing
on a non-virtualized server. Everything ran
smoothly, and I did not notice anything unusual.
A perfect setup for professional gaming.”
— Navid Javadi, aka mousesports|Kapio
24
100
80
60
40
20
Average CPU Utilization (percentage)
32 36
Number of VMs
40
Power (Watts)
740
720
680
640
700
660
Figure 15. ESL virtual game servers on Intel® Xeon® processor
7400 Series-based platforms.
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White Paper Consolidation of a Performance-Sensitive Application