Why do context switches on a RHEL6.1 KVM host increase if the virtual CPU model 'Nehalem' is used with RHEL5.6 guests?
Issue
The context switch count on a RHEL6.1 KVM host (displayed in the 'cs' column of the vmstat command output) can increase if the virtual CPU model used with RHEL5.6 guests is changed from the default to Nehalem
.
Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 KVM host
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 KVM guest
- 64-bit guest kernel (x86_64 architecture)
- The virtual CPU model
Nehalem
is specified in the guest configuration data.
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