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nodeal
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VMWare Fusion very slow on Mac

I am running host OS Sierra 10.12.3 and I have 3 Virtual Machines open at the same time also running Mac OS Sierra 10.12.3

Sometimes the VMs run very smooth and everything is fine. But too often they run extremely slow and it takes forever just to do something simple like click on a link or open a new tab in my web browser.

I run them off an external HD and I can hear the external HD spinning and working very hard when these slowdowns occur. Does this slowdown have to do with the external HD I am using? Is there anything I can do to speed things up? Thanks for any support.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

There's virtually no info to help with what you currently supply.

How much memory has the host? How much memory do you assign to the guests.

Speaking of which, what guest OS is each of the guests running?

Are all guests slow at the same time?

Without additional info I have to guess... and my guess in that case is that your guests are Windows.

All from before Windows 10 and all are checking for Windows Updates at the time you experience the slowness. One way to verify is that in task manager of the guest OS as it will have a process called "svchost" running high CPU.

If that's the case then for Windows 7 and Vista you can find some resolve here:

Re: Can anyone suggest a fix for Windows 7 updates failing?

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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nodeal
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi wila Thanks for responding. Sorry I haven't responded back recently.

The host has 16GB of RAM, I am running anywhere from 30% - 60% of my memory capacity when using my virtual machines.

The host and guest OS are all running Mac OS Sierra 10.12.3

I will open my first 3 virtual machines. The first 3 will open relatively quickly. I almost always suspend my virtual machines when I am done using them, so whenever I open my virtual machines they are being restored from a suspended state. As I just said, these first 3 virtual machines will open relatively quickly. I take care of whatever work I need to take care of on these 3 virtual machines, then I suspend them and then close them.

After I close the first 3 VMs, I will go to open another 3 VMs. This is where my problems begins. When I go to open this next batch of 3 VMs they take forever to open. It shows "Restoring virtual machine state" with a progress bar that creeps ever so slowly. Sometimes it can take up to 30 minutes to open 3 virtual machines!

Is there anything I can change in settings menu to speed things up? I cannot effectively work with the VMs taking so long to open.

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bluefirestorm
Champion
Champion

This probably has nothing to do with the slow resumption of your macOS VMs. But the Apple license agreement explicitly allows up to 2 copies/instances in VM environments on Apple hardware. I think Apple also allows a maximum number of computers (5 if I am not mistaken) to be registered on the same Apple ID.

http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1012.pdf

It would help to know if your processor is an i5 or i7. And how many processors/memory are assigned to each.

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nodeal
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have an i7 processor

I am sorry I do not know how to check how much processors / memory are assigned to each?

Thanks for your response

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi nodeal,

The way you are using your VMs is most likely the culprit here. Not everybody starts 3 VMs, works with them, suspends them and then goes on to the next 3 VMs.

Not that I am saying you should change that, but it isn't the most common usage scenario and as such, by default, VMware Fusion is not perfectly tuned for that.

For example for most users it is nice that most of the suspend happens in the background as it makes the suspend appear to happen fast while in reality it just happens in the background (and as such is slower!)

Also a VMware VM has a memory backing file for each VM, so if you assign 4GB of RAM to the VM, it writes out a 4GB file backing file for supporting that RAM in case you run out of free RAM. If you are just testing, then you probably don't need that either.

Luckily though there is a lot you can do to make it behave more like you need.

Re: delayed HDD activities after suspend

The settings in the post above change those defaults.

Note that you have to adjust the .vmx file for the VMs which display the issues and as such you will have to shutdown -not suspend- those VMs before you make the change to the .vmx file. I also tend to suggest to shut down VMware Fusion as that way the .vmx file is no longer opened by Fusion, making sure you have no window open for the VM -and VM shut down- would be fine too.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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