Starwind high CPU load

[Kirby2001]

Hello Community,
Running into high CPU usage on Starwind VMs after configuring HA with NVMe-oF. Dashboard shows ~42% CPU usage, no storage load is currently running to the storage. Is it expected behavior?

[dmytro (staff)]

Hello Kirby2001,

Welcome to StarWind Forum, and thank you for your interest in our Technical Preview Program.

What hypervisor are you using, what’s your CPU model, and how many vCPUs are allocated to StarWind Controller VM?

StarWind NVMe-oF target operates in polling mode, where dedicated CPU cores are continuously polled for I/O completions instead of relying on interrupts. This design removes interrupt handling overhead and context switches, allowing the target to sustain higher IOPS and achieve lower latency. As a result, you may observe relatively higher baseline CPU usage even when no storage load is running. This is expected behavior in general, once you create the first NVMe-oF device.

[sparklesrapid]

Instead of depending on interrupts, the StarWind NVMe-oF target uses polling mode, in which dedicated CPU cores are continuously polled for I/O completions.