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Managing CPU Cycles in a Zone

CPU usage in a zone is primarily managed through three different properties.

  • CPU cap: The maximum number of CPU cycles that are allocated to a zone. Zones can never consume more CPU cycles than what is allocated to the cap.
  • CPU shares: The minimum number of CPU cycles available to a zone at any given time. SmartOS uses the Fair Share Scheduler (FSS) to distribute CPU shares among zones.

  • CPU baseline: A soft limit on the number of CPU cycles a hosted application can consume. If an application experiences heavy throughput, it can use CPU bursting to temporarily consume CPU cycles that exceed the allocated baseline limit, providing a temporary performance boost.

  • CPU Caps and Shares

  • CPU Bursting