Performance issues and systems becoming unresponsive after kernel upgrade from RHEL6.4 to RHEL6.5

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • After upgrading to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 kernel version 2.6.32-431, very high CPU load and many processes in state 'D' (uninterruptible) can occur, and the system can become unresponsive.
  • The issue was originally observed on NUMA systems (2 nodes) that are running web server and mail server workloads.
  • The issue was observed on not-NUMA VMware virtual machines with less than 8GB of RAM.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 kernel version 2.6.32-431
  • NUMA system and non-NUMA
  • web server (httpd) or mail server (smtp) and java workloads

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