VMware CPU's

That depends on a number of factors, including speed of memory to CPU bus.  The CPU may be marginally different per core but your new processors will almost def support NUMA so that may add to your performance.

What is the disk and memory utilisation like for the VM?

Can you benchmark on current hardware and then test on new hardware?

btw, do all 4 vCPUs on the VM run at 100% - i.e. proper multi-threaded application running?

Hi Roylong

The server in question is a SQL 2008 server that our website runs off and it only occasionally hits 100% but on average it runs at approximately 48%. The memory and disk utilisation isn't a problem. I think the question I'm asking would I see a rise in my CPU usage (SQL server) on the new system if I had to compare the two side by side?
Thanks  

What i am inferring by my answer is that you may see performance increase you may not, if you are upgrading the version of the processor then it may have better support and memory management within vmware, which will in turn put less overhead on the CPUs when dealing with other tasks on the server.  This could lead to better performance from the outset.

what version of SQL server 2008 are you running?
What version of windows?
What current processors are you using? Intel or AMD?
What six-core are you moving to?
How much memory is assigned to the VM and how much assigned to each socket of your processor on the server i.e. Is it NUMA aware and using banks of memory assigned to each processor?

SQL server 2008 ENT STD 32 bit but looking at upgrading it to 64 bit on the new server
Windows 2003 ENt 32 bit but will be upgrading it to 64 bit on the new server
Current is Intel Xeon X5365 3.00 GHz
Moving to Intel Xeon E5640 2.66 GHz
How much memory is assigned to the VM and how much assigned to each socket of your processor on the server i.e. Is it NUMA aware and using banks of memory assigned to each processor? - I'm not sure at this is with a hosting provider and I dont know how it was setup

Do I would say that the processor impact on that set up will be minimal with respect to the 32-bit versions.. ..your main limiting factor on the actual VM is going to be memory due to the limits with 32-bit versions.

Moving to the 64-bit versions will allow you to make much better usage of the resources available, especially on the newer intel processors.

So my take home, moving to the newer processor architecture with your current VM will probably improve your performance as is, but purely because there will be less contention for host resources.  Moving to 64-bit on the new architecture will send your current set up the way of the dinosaurs.

The X5365 is benchmarked at 4090 and the E5640 is benchmarked at 5482 (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html), which means you are getting a 34% increase in overall cpu power.  Whether that means you won't see 100% utilization depends on how much more cpu was demanded, but you should see less cpu usage with the new processors.