What Does CPU Contention Mean?
CPU contention is an event wherein individual CPU components and machines in a virtualized hardware system wait too long for their turn at processing. In such a system, resources (e.g., CPU, memory, etc.) are distributed between different virtual machines (VMs). As different processing resources are assigned to different machines, the schedulers in the system order the input/output and other tasks. The processing of these tasks is delayed when the machines assigned to them are experiencing a CPU contention.
Techopedia Explains CPU Contention
Experts who look at CPU contention warn that this type of internal conflict can happen easily in a virtualized system. However, there are different ways to analyze the system to find out whether CPU contention is a problem. IT professionals look at the work of the VM kernel in handling the different processing demands. A metric called percent ready (%ready) shows how long a machine has to wait for processing power. When this number climbs too high, it indicates CPU contention.
