PFsense on Esxi - 100% CPU Usage?
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Hi,
I have been running PFsense on a 6 ESXI box, server specs:
E3-1245
Supermicro - X11SSL-CF-O
64gb ram
Evo SSDThe system has been running since mid may. It has been great & I have had to do very little with it. I have a Freepbx installation running (Asterisk) for my home phones on another Esxi box (cheapie Dell T110II) & I would like to change the setup so the Freepbx is on the Pfsense box & I can repurpose the Dell server to a freenas backup - that is besides the point). I did upgrade Pfsense from 2.3.1 to p5.
Anyway, I transfered my Freepbx vm to the Pfsense esxi box on Friday & left it running over the weekend. We dont do much calling on home phones so I am not surpirsed we didnt notice anything amiss.
So my wife is working from home today & has mentioned that the IP pbx system keeps dropping calls. Separately I noticed a big delay when browsing the web. While looking at pfsense on the dashboard I saw the CPU spike to 100%. Typically a speedtest.net run will make the pfsense dashboard cpu goto 4%.
I tried rebooting pfsense, then rebooting the esxi box. Then I shutdown the pfsense vm, gave it a second core, and rebooted it. My wife again said the phones kept disconnecting.
My next test was to shutdown the freepbx vm on the Supermicro box & turn it back on the dell box.
Just now the CPU on the dashboard spiked to 35% - its just my wife & I home, no major downloading just email & web.
Any idea what could be causing the issues? The main change was adding freepbx to the pfsense/esxi box but freepbx is pretty low CPU usage.
Thanks,
Rich -
If it was just 100% for a brief moment, that's safe to disregard. The dashboard itself pulls a lot of system details and will chew a bit of CPU, especially if it's a single vCPU VM, will very briefly have periods of high CPU usage. That runs at a lesser priority than the actual packet processing of the system, so it won't really have a noticeable impact on its function. Status>Monitoring is a better gauge of long-term CPU usage. Doubtful CPU usage has anything to do with dropping VoIP calls.
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It looks like i am at 100% - though I am not exactly sure what this means (see attached). I did add a second core & the system seemed normal in the middle of the day today. The drop seems in line with me messing around.
@cmb:
If it was just 100% for a brief moment, that's safe to disregard. The dashboard itself pulls a lot of system details and will chew a bit of CPU, especially if it's a single vCPU VM, will very briefly have periods of high CPU usage. That runs at a lesser priority than the actual packet processing of the system, so it won't really have a noticeable impact on its function. Status>Monitoring is a better gauge of long-term CPU usage. Doubtful CPU usage has anything to do with dropping VoIP calls.
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That's the number of processes. Your CPU usage is trivially low. No indication of any problem there.
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@cmb:
That's the number of processes. Your CPU usage is trivially low. No indication of any problem there.
So should i take away a core? I had 1, gave it 2 & the phone kept kicking my wife off.
The phone is VOIP so I dont know what the issue was related to. I assumed it was due to internet bandwidth. I noticed I was having a very hard time connecting on my wired desktop. Once i moved the pbx vm to the other Esxi box things went back to normal.
Is there something or somewhere else i should look? The esxi box itself? I would like to run 1 esxi box with both vms on it.
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2 is fine, and better than 1. I'd leave it at 2. My point was just that the CPU usage isn't 100% for any length of time, so subject isn't actually an issue and you can rule out anything CPU-related.
It's not likely the firewall that's dropping calls. Maybe you were having general Internet connectivity issues at the time, since you mentioned connectivity issues with other things. Which is likely ISP-induced. But that's the next step of troubleshooting, see if you have solid connectivity in general.
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Was a solution to this ever found? Recently discovered I have the exact same issue, but with pfsense 2.4.2 and esxi 6.5. I can't find anything about it on the web, and this seems to be the most comprehensive discussion that was had on the topic.
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Read up one post. There is no identifiable problem with the firewall software. I would suggest starting another thread detailing exactly what you are seeing instead.
