A. In virtualization, processor affinity (also known as hard affinity) allows you to link a virtual processor with a physical core in the host. This is required in many virtualization solutions because a virtual machine (VM) needs to make sure it always gets a full CPU's worth of processing, and the virtual layers don't have other ways of ensuring a VM always gets a full core.
Hyper-V can reserve a percentage of a CPU's processing power for a VM, but doesn't require you to reserve a specific core for a VM. You can set that reserve to 100 percent, meaning a VM is guaranteed to have a full CPU core's processing power. Setting a 100 percent reservation for a VM has more or less the same effect as setting a processor affinity, but Hyper-V doesn't need processor affinity nor support it.
Related Reading:
- Virtualization Myths and Misconceptions
- Q. I'm seeing a big performance difference with my live migration operations when I use Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV), is this normal?
- Q. How can I list all applications being published from a Windows Virtual PC virtual machine (VM)?
- Q. Why are my virtual machines (VMs) migrated between nodes in a cluster using Quick Migration instead of Live Migration when I shut down a cluster node?
Check out hundreds more useful Q&As like this in John Savill's FAQ for Windows. Also, watch instructional videos made by John at ITTV.net.
