VMware Communities
ehendrix
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Fusion 3.0.1 heavily beaten by Parallels 5 in performance

ok,

So Macworld did a new performance test between the 3 different virtualization solutions and Parallels did not just beat Fusion in almost every aspect of the performance, it overall did it on such a large scale that it's not even funny anymore. One would almost think that Fusion must still have a bunch of debug code turned on compared to Parallels yet we know this is not the case.

See: http://www.macworld.com/article/145878/2010/01/virtulapptesting.html?lsrc=rss_main

What is actually sad is that VirtualBox seems to be sometimes faster, sometimes on par with Fusion, but VirtualBox is the free option (does not have all the options of Fusion though).

So my question to the VMWare developers, what are the plans to bridge this gap in performance? It really seems to me that Parallels is doing something different compared to Fusion resulting in these enormous performance differences. Will this be addressed so that performance will come more to an equal status? Also interested in why VMWare, such a big player in the virtualization, is beaten so heavily in performance by Parallels? Is there something done differently making the Fusion solution better yet slower? Not from what I can see but maybe the developers have some comments on it?

One of my main reasons to continue to use Fusion is on the way snapshots work, but looking at these performance differences one does have to question if it is worth it.

Thanks.

Reply
0 Kudos
132 Replies
HPReg
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

I just feel we need to keep this thread alive to remind fusion team the customers

are still waiting for performance improvements.

There is no need for this. It just creates unnecessary noise in our mailboxes. The Fusion team is well aware of the performance problem, and we are actively hiring in that area (see http://tinyurl.com/ycafxra ).

Heres yet another fresh benchmark:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/16/mac-virtualization-face-off-vmware-fusion-3-vs-parallels-deskt/

This is a re-hash of the same issues. Looks like journalists have found an easy target.

Reply
0 Kudos
bytekeeper
Contributor
Contributor

Sorry HPreg. I have no doubts you guys are aware of the problem and willing/going to fix it sooner or later. However, it is clear that you don't put enough effort into this. Look, the problem is there for quite long time now and still you are only hiring someone to cope with it. So thats another half on an year at best until its addressed. I'm sure || will come out with 6.0 by that time. I think it is just unacceptable for the company of this class! You are not a bunch of coders from garage office after all.

I'm trying, trying hard to not lose the confidence in fusion but it is getting more complicated with every month. I'm giving up if 3.1 is out with same level of "no one cares about" updates from 3.0.1-3.0.2.

Sorry for the rant, shutting up till 3.1.

Reply
0 Kudos
dicen
Contributor
Contributor


I just feel we need to keep this thread alive to remind fusion team the customers
are still waiting for performance improvements.

There is no need for this. It just creates unnecessary noise in our mailboxes. The Fusion team is well aware of the performance problem, and we are actively hiring in that area (see ).

Heres yet another fresh benchmark:

</div>This is a re-hash of the same issues. Looks like journalists have found an easy target.

</div>

They are running 3DMark and are getting black screens on Fusion! You don't support 3DMark? But, how can that be when you say you support DirectX 9 SM3? I am very confused here. 3DMark is a very common DirectX 9 app that is used to verify graphics card/driver functionality and well as performance.

This VMware Fusion features web page has the following info http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10957

3D Graphics Now Supports More Applications and Games

  • Support for Windows Aero with WDDM driver for Windows 7 and Windows
    Vista

  • DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 3 support for Windows virtual
    machines

  • OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows XP virtual machines

You're hiring? But, you already said you included the functionality above. Isn't VMware owned by EMC now? A multi-billion dollar IT company. Why do you need to hire people when a little bitty company like Parallels already has it working? How is that possible? Why is it that they have the people and you don't? Hmmm... something is wrong with this picture. You have revenue of over a billion dollars and yet a small little company with 750 employees and only $100 million a year in revenue has it working perfectly.

VMware

Revenue\

[US $\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar\

United

States dollar] 1.9 Billion

Employees\

7,100

[Parent\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holding_company\

Holding

company]

[EMC Corporation\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMC_Corporation\

EMC

Corporation]

Parallels

Revenue\

[US$\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar\

United

States dollar] 100 million (2008) ^[[2]\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallels,_Inc.#cite_note-1]^

Employees\

~750 (as of Jun 2009\)

$1.9 Billion / $100 million = 19x as large

7100 / 750 = 9.46x as large

Well, he said they were hiring folks so we are not going to get this fixed anytime soon. Major brain drain. I find it very interesting that Parallels also has a number of server virtualization products as well but nearly 10x less employees.

Check out EMC. VMware should have all the geniuses the world over. Something is definitely very wrong with this picture. I wonder what?

Revenue\

[$\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar\

United

States dollar] 14.876 billion (2008)^[[1]\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMC_Corporation#cite_note-financialtables-0]^

Operating income\

[$\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar\

United

States dollar] 1.568 billion (2008)^[[1]\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMC_Corporation#cite_note-financialtables-0]^

[Net

income\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_income\

Net income]

$\ 1.345 billion (2008)^[[1]\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMC_Corporation#cite_note-financialtables-0]^

Total assets\

[$\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar\

United

States dollar] 23.874 billion (2008)^[[1]\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMC_Corporation#cite_note-financialtables-0]^

[Total equity\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ownership_equity\

Ownership

equity]

[$\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar\

United

States dollar] 13.041 billion (2008)^[[1]\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMC_Corporation#cite_note-financialtables-0]^

Employees\

42,100 (March 2009)

Reply
0 Kudos
brainee28
Contributor
Contributor

This is getting way out of hand here.

HP Reg has said they're aware of it, and they're trying to work on it, including hiring outside help to work on the performance portion.

Ever been in a Parallels forum? They tell you absolutely nothing. No response. So most of you should be lucky that you're getting one from VMWare.

Parallels hasn't figured out how to effectively talk to their users. It adds a layer of frustration to an already tense situation.

@HPReg: I think it's fairly obvious due to the length of the thread that Fusion 3 has performance issues. It's also obvious that the customers that purchased Fusion 3 did so with the understanding that performance would be at least equivalent to version 2, if not better.

This doesn't sit well when someone buys an upgrade, thinking it's better, and finding it goes slower. Whether it's anecdotal or statistical, the perception is that it was supposed to be better. I personally have noticed this problem. I alleviated it somewhat with aligning my partition, and actually changing from 1 processor to 2 seemed to make it run a lot smoother, along with my Mac apps.

Often times, companies disregard the end user and just build what they think is the product people want. Why some of these people are posting is that they don't want VMWare to sidestep the issue, ignore the issue or pay lip service to get past the problem. Now I don't think that's yours or VMWare's intention; they just want to ensure that's not the case.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Address the performance issues with a sense of urgency here. This seems to be important, so don't blow it off.

I understand that Fusion developers must be tired of hearing people complain about this, but this directly sells the product. Performance along with stability, flexibility, and scalability are extremely important, and some people are getting the impression that the Fusion developers didn't think so when they released version 3.

Reply
0 Kudos
dicen
Contributor
Contributor

This is getting way out of hand here.

HP Reg has said they're aware of it, and they're trying to work on it, including hiring outside help to work on the performance portion.

Ever been in a Parallels forum? They tell you absolutely nothing. No response. So most of you should be lucky that you're getting one from VMWare.

Parallels hasn't figured out how to effectively talk to their users. It adds a layer of frustration to an already tense situation.

@HPReg: I think it's fairly obvious due to the length of the thread that Fusion 3 has performance issues. It's also obvious that the customers that purchased Fusion 3 did so with the understanding that performance would be at least equivalent to version 2, if not better.

This doesn't sit well when someone buys an upgrade, thinking it's better, and finding it goes slower. Whether it's anecdotal or statistical, the perception is that it was supposed to be better. I personally have noticed this problem. I alleviated it somewhat with aligning my partition, and actually changing from 1 processor to 2 seemed to make it run a lot smoother, along with my Mac apps.

Often times, companies disregard the end user and just build what they think is the product people want. Why some of these people are posting is that they don't want VMWare to sidestep the issue, ignore the issue or pay lip service to get past the problem. Now I don't think that's yours or VMWare's intention; they just want to ensure that's not the case.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Address the performance issues with a sense of urgency here. This seems to be important, so don't blow it off.

I understand that Fusion developers must be tired of hearing people complain about this, but this directly sells the product. Performance along with stability, flexibility, and scalability are extremely important, and some people are getting the impression that the Fusion developers didn't think so when they released version 3.

</div>

I didn't say I was irked about the lack of performance. I am irked about the lack of functionality. They are selling a product that says it supports DirectX 9 SM3. That is plainly false if it can't even run 3DMark without black screens and numerious graphical errors. Being slow is one thing, being so broken that it displays a black screen is another. This is false advertising plain and simple.

Reply
0 Kudos
woodmeister
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Parallels will "import" the virtual machine into it's own format and when

the VM is started it will install it's own tools. Also note, there will be

an activation required after a three day period with Windows7.

P.S. I would suggest backing up your VM just in case you do

something wrong.

Reply
0 Kudos
HPReg
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

3DMark: Yes, we are a incorrect/slow on some Mac models which came out after Fusion 3.0 came out (such as the ones with Core i7 CPUs). Expect a lot of improvements on that front in the next Fusion 3.1 refresh (not the one that came out a week ago) when running on a Mac OS 10.6.3 host.

Company size: You are comparing apples and oranges. Yes, VMware has a much larger headcount and revenue that Parallels. But keep in mind that at VMware, only a fraction of the company works on the desktop products (which is in relation to the revenue these products bring), and of that, only a fraction works on Fusion. Maybe you won't believe me, but I estimate that the Fusion team is about 10x less numerous than the Parallels team. While we do need to improve on the perf front, and we are working on it, we have done the best we could so far given our resources. That being said, we do have people working on Fusion perf right now, and we are hiring more.

Reply
0 Kudos
blopzy
Contributor
Contributor

Regis,

While you don't necessarily need to provide excuses, you also shouldn't be trying to disguise here.

3DMark: Yes, we are a incorrect/slow on some Mac models which came out after Fusion 3.0 came out (such as the ones with Core i7 CPUs). Expect a lot of improvements on that front in the next Fusion 3.1 refresh (not the one that came out a week ago) when running on a Mac OS 10.6.3 host.

The notorious Mactech video shows Fusion failing to display 3DMark on unibody MacBook Pro, which were available since 2008, long before Fusion 3. So, the problem is not only with the latest hardware as you're trying to present.


On the other note, OS X 10.6.3 isn't out yet. Why not simply support current 10.5.8 and 10.6.2?



Company size: You are comparing apples and oranges. Yes, VMware has a much larger headcount and revenue that Parallels. But keep in mind that at VMware, only a fraction of the company works on the desktop products (which is in relation to the revenue these products bring), and of that, only a fraction works on Fusion.

Are you saying that Fusion shares no code with ESX and Workstation? As you stated in another thread, at least the VM monitor and guest tools (like graphics drivers) are shared. And I bet, much more code is common for VMware virtualization products. This effectively makes the official Fusion team size irrelevant because it uses many common resources, right?



Maybe you won't believe me, but I estimate that the Fusion team is about 10x less numerous than the Parallels team.

This is just unfair to Parallels and you most probably can't prove that claim. Parallels also has other products besides Desktop fro Mac, and they are free to balance their resources as they wish. VMware has 10x more manpower, so the original posters' point is still valid.


I recall VMware marketing used the small Fusion team size to demonstrate advantage over the competition, and now you're using it in quite the opposite sense.



While we do need to improve on the perf front, and we are working on it, we have done the best we could so far given our resources. That being said, we do have people working on Fusion perf right now, and we are hiring more.

Actually my personal complaint is only with missing OpenGL for Linux support. VMware has basically bought full Linux OpenGL code and team (Tungsten graphics) and is still unable to leverage that. And after all you still talking about not having enough resources...

Reply
0 Kudos
HPReg
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

you also shouldn't be trying to disguise here.

It frustrates me a lot to answer in this forum, because whatever I say is necessarily interpreted the wrong way by somebody Smiley Happy

On the other note, OS X 10.6.3 isn't out yet. Why not simply support current 10.5.8 and 10.6.2?

We made a choice very early on to virtualize the GPU by using the host GPU, and not do it in software. The competition made a different choice, basing their code mostly on Wine/Crossover.

So far, the competition has been more correct and faster for 3D because the OpenGL stack on Mac OS is ahem... subpar compared to Windows/Linux, mostly because Apple only optimizes the paths they use. When the path that is used is that of a Windows driver, their drivers suck. But things are changing, and Apple will be providing much better OpenGL drivers in 10.6.3. That is why we care so much about 10.6.3.

We believe our architecture is the right one for the long-term. For example, using the competitior's architecture, you cannot correctly suspend/resume a VM while it is doing something in 3D (game, or os window manager). Our architecture can. So time will tell who is right.

Are you saying that Fusion shares no code with ESX and Workstation? As you stated in another thread, at least the VM monitor and guest tools (like graphics drivers) are shared. And I bet, much more code is common for VMware virtualization products.

Yes

This effectively makes the official Fusion team size irrelevant because it uses many common resources, right?

No. A lot of the optimizations happen in the device backend, which are specific to the host OS.

This is just unfair to Parallels and you most probably can't prove that claim. Parallels also has other products besides Desktop fro Mac, and they are free to balance their resources as they wish.

I don't think my claim is far from reality. The reality is that Parallels sells little out of their Mac product. This is their lifeline, so they put most of their resources on it. That is not the case of VMware. While they are mostly focusing on their Mac product, we are mostly focusing on our datacenter products.

I recall VMware marketing used the small Fusion team size to demonstrate advantage over the competition, and now you're using it in quite the opposite sense.

I'm an engineer, I cannot answer for what the marketing team does Smiley Happy

Actually my personal complaint is only with missing OpenGL for Linux support. VMware has basically bought full Linux OpenGL code and team (Tungsten graphics) and is still unable to leverage that.

Have you tried the Linux tools which come with Fusion 3.1 beta and WS 7.1 beta? They have OpenGL support if you provide a non-default config option to the installer.

Reply
0 Kudos
ae3265
Contributor
Contributor

HPReg:

As a customer it frustrates me a lot that in the time you'e spent defending the state of things, you could have been looking into the headless mode that got broke in 3, or at least bothered to respond to my last query about it.

Actually, as I use Fusion more from a server perspective, I can deal with the video issues. Lack of a complete and properly functioning headless mode, which was present in 2 and thoroughly broken in 3, is a mch bigger issue and led to my use of competing products.

Reply
0 Kudos
ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

As I recall, headless mode as you describe was never a supported feature.

Reply
0 Kudos
ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Light bulbs just went off about the graphics issue - thanks much. 10.6.3 should improve performance on a number of fronts (both VM and host applications).

Having been an enterprise customer of yours, I'm honestly a bit surprised that VMWare did invest as much in Fusion as they have. It can't be more than a penny or two on your net profit. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth :-). Just a couple of other questions: Can you share if you're also working on optimizing the disk interface code - that also seems to be a real source of bottlenecks? Second, is there any chance that we'll see a usable full-screen toolbar back (like in version 2) so we can get to the actual Mac menu bar while in a VM?

Reply
0 Kudos
matthewls
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

HPReg,

Many thanks for providing this information. I've been testing 3.1b and it's going well enough for me to reclaim P5 disk space. I'm looking forward to 10.6.3 even more now.

Another cluemy W7-64 was WAY slower to start, suspend, and resume than XP-64 with equivalent parametersexcept the W7 had a split VHD and xp-64 didn't. Converting the VHD to a single volume improved W7 to equivalent performance with the xp64 VM.

MS

Reply
0 Kudos
GlennyG
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

"Second, is there any chance that we'll see a usable full-screen

toolbar back (like in version 2) so we can get to the actual Mac menu

bar while in a VM?"

If you mean the silly little Windows dropdown thing that's utterly

pointless on the different user interface found on a Mac, yes. There's

a setting to disable it which puts VMWare back to the old, version 2,

way of working.

I don't have the setting to hand but I got it from these forum pages.

If we're all adding our own pet peaves; I'd vote for some effort being

put into the library functionality as the damn thing 'touches' all

VM's file system and resets the last access date/time.

Reply
0 Kudos
ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

And a huge second to your bug about the library touching all the VM's. VERY annoying as it triggers backups when none are needed.

Likewise, let's do away with the application stub caches if we've got the host integration stuff turned off.

Reply
0 Kudos
Husky86
Contributor
Contributor

While I realize this may be somewhat off topic by the time I've had a chance to chime in here -- i.e. this original conversation has produced a wealth of postings going in a number of different directions, but still with the bottom line that Fusion is now seriously outperformed by Parallels -- I just wanted to note my own quick experience with using Fusion (which has proven to be totally frustrating):

My wife acquired her own brand-new iMac about 8-10 months ago. I am a big NaturallySpeaking user on the Windows side as a result of serious carpal tunnel syndrome. I decided that with the acquisition of her new iMac I would go ahead and try Fusion 3 in association with NaturallySpeaking.

This was about the time that Windows 7 was just released on the market. I purchased an OEM version of Windows 7 Home Premium along with Fusion 3.

The result?: NaturallySpeaking cannot even begin to launch under Fusion 3. I only get to the NaturallySpeaking splash page and it will go no further.

Although Nuance (makers of NaturallySpeaking) were not under any technical obligation to assist me in trying to make NaturallySpeaking run within this virtualization environment, they nonetheless have attempted to provide technical support for the past couple of months. Unfortunately, all to no avail. (I have sent them countless log files, for example, and they are really perplexed as to why Fusion 3 seems to be putting up such a wall with regard to running programs such as NaturallySpeaking.)

Again, they have no idea why Fusion will not allow NaturallySpeaking to run within the Windows 7 environment -- it runs perfectly on a native Windows 7 machine, of course.

At this point, I'm not taking another gamble with Parallels, but I certainly know that Fusion has been a total bust. Very disappointing!

Reply
0 Kudos
lugesm2
Contributor
Contributor

+QUOTE: Husky86+

At this point, I'm not taking another gamble with Parallels, but I certainly know that Fusion has been a total bust. Very disappointing!

Having posted in the string early-on, an update . . .

I bought Parallels 5 and loaded it on my iMac with Win7 Home Premium, leaving Fusion 3/Win7 in place, also on the same iMac. The comparison was not good for VMWare. I like Parallels 5, but have always preferred the Fusion product, until V3.

However, on the bright side, I have recently loaded Fusion 3.1 (Release Candidate) and find it to be much more competitive.

I always liked Fusion, starting with V1, and I am hopeful that the developers at VMWare will regain their performance position relative to Parallels. Having been in technology all my life, I am confident that a lot of energy (and sweat) is being expended by VMWare to achieve this. Best of luck to the folks at VMW ! Don't give up.

Reply
0 Kudos
ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Upgrade to 10.6.3 and Fusion 3.1. VMWare has made hude strides, and their architectural decisions have been validated by Apple's improvements.

Reply
0 Kudos
matthewls
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yes, Fusion 3.1RC with os 10.6.3 is great. It may improve further with 10.6.4, which is targeting improved graphics. For me, this combination is the best so far.

MS

Reply
0 Kudos
Husky86
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the info on RC1.

I installed it and it certainly has improved the overall performance of Fusion. Unfortunately, NaturallySpeaking still doesn't work. I even uninstalled and reinstalled NaturallySpeakingafter installing RC1, but no luck.

Reply
0 Kudos