Some questions aboout "default CPU affinity to only physical cores"

[DeadHead]

If I understand correctly, this is something that will be implemented in some way in 4.1?

Just a bit curious as to how this will work. Will it be applied in some form of general setting by default, or will it be up to the user to set core affinity for different processes manually? Could this possibly be applied through some form of settings file, where you/the users share their experiences with different applications in case the application suffer/benefit from hyperthreading, kind of building up a database of optimal settings?

Would like to learn more about this!

[Jeremy Collake]

Just a bit curious as to how this will work. Will it be applied in some form of general setting by default, or will it be up to the user to set core affinity for different processes manually? Could this possibly be applied through some form of settings file, where you/the users share their experiences with different applications in case the application suffer/benefit from hyperthreading, kind of building up a database of optimal settings?

I apologize for the delay in response. I missed this post. Some of our future plans are classified (there are many copy-cats around), but you can already see our current implementation in the beta. From the user's side, it is a simple option in the affinity setting of a process (right-click context menu).

As for which applications benefit from this, we'll leave that up to users to decide. This is something that would vary substantially from PC to PC, as software environments are so different.

I apologize for being a bit vague. More details will come

[akurlansky]

I have a 32 processor Windows 2008 R2 machine. What would be the easiest way to set up the following. (1) I want to allow as a affinity default all processes to use processors 0-27. Then I want to have specific process A run only on processor 28, B on 29, C on 30, and D on 31.

[edkiefer]

I have a 32 processor Windows 2008 R2 machine. What would be the easiest way to set up the following. (1) I want to allow as a affinity default all processes to use processors 0-27. Then I want to have specific process A run only on processor 28, B on 29, C on 30, and D on 31.

What you can doinstead of setting  each one separately, is try and sort the processes in a group if possible.
Then mouse click on  top process in GUI list and do shift+mouse on last process in the group , then right click on them as a group choosing CPU affinity > always "select cpu affinity".
That will save you some time if you can group some of the processes.

[akurlansky]

Thanks for the response. I'll give that a try. Also is possible to have default affinity settings for wildcard processes ie *.exe? So one doesn't always have to remember to add an entry every time a new process (name) is installed.

[edkiefer]

PL does support wildcard's but I am not 100% sure to what extent with affinities ,you could do a little test as it will show up right away in GUI.
Check the doc, it will go into more detail .

Just note some of the doc's are older than features/GUI of PL, it is constantly updated but info should be correct feature wise or better.

https://bitsum.com/docs/pl/Using%20the%20GUI/using_the_gui.htm#default_affinities

[Jeremy Collake]

Wildcards are supported for CPU affinities, but do be careful with wildcards that are too inclusive, such as *.* or *.exe.

In fact, some safeguards are built into the product to protect against wildcards that match too broadly, as I feared potential problems if users tried such.

I'm not saying there would be problems, but also can't say there wouldn't be - thus protected against it.

In general, you should apply CPU affinities more selectively.

[akurlansky]

I installed Process Lasso on one of our production servers and now no one can remote desktop to it in order to logon.
After I logged out I was not able get back on. Also, since people can't logon I killed all the processes associated with the app,
All Process Governors and all Process Lassos.

Any ideas on how to fix this urgently needed?
When we try to remote desktop to it it immediately times out. Only usera with local logon credentials to the server can logon.

[edkiefer]

That is a odd issue, what version are you using ?

Also, are you saying even with GUI and governor closed, you still can't remotely log in?

[akurlansky]

Correct.

[akurlansky]

Version of Windows or you app?

[edkiefer]

Version of Windows or you app?

well both I guess, but I was asking PL version .
your on server 2008 or 2012 ?

Also does uninstalling PL fix the log in issue ?

[akurlansky]

Windows 2008 R2. We will try to uninstall it and see,

[Jeremy Collake]

There should be ZERO correlation with Process Lasso and Remote Desktop Service availability, *unless* you've set specific rules that might interfere with it. Otherwise, everything Lasso does is written to the log, so you should clearly see any action it takes. If you've not set any rules that might cause bizarre behavior, I'd suspect this is coincidental, and you'll discover the same after uninstalling Lasso.

EDIT: Remember, Lasso, by default, makes NO system configuration changes and it's ProBalance algorithm is very conservative.

[edkiefer]

I would double check anything to do with remote desktop , like check you still have it enabled in system properties>remote tab and make sure any of the remote services are running .
PL won't change any of this but something to check out .

[Jeremy Collake]

And note that we have, oh, thousands, of customers running Process Lasso on Remote Desktop Servers using Windows 2008 r2, so your environment is not in any way untested or unique .

Once you do some investigation, I'm confident you'll find that Process Lasso itself has nothing to do with the problems you are seeing, again, unless you created some excessive new rule.

[akurlansky]

We rebooted the machine and was then able to remote desktop in and so on. But just as a safety measure we uninstalled process lasso.
I should mention that we have been having intermittent hardware issues with this machine, so it could well be coincidental as you say.

In any event I will continue to play with the product on our test machines, then take it from there.

Thanks for your quick responses.
-ak

[BenYeeHua]

Yup, and remember to report back, if you are allowed to do so.
It may be a interesting story.