Performance Issues with VMWare Fusion on iMac Pro

[nedeox]

Hello everyone

I have a rather specific problem, where the usual internet search didn't get me further.

I have VMWare installed on the iMac Pro (the 18 core version 64gb RAM, so really powerful) and due to our project I have to have 12 Windows 10 VMs running.

This is the only setup currently viable in our infrasturcture, so I have these constrictions to have those VMs running on one Mac.

All VMs are hooked to a private vm-network (I need several port forwards).

There is a webserver running on one of the Windows VM and is accessed via intranet (the mac itself is within the company's network) by portforwarding (port from mac to port 80 of VM).

The other VMs are accessed via RDP from within our company. I have set up a portforward from one Mac-Port to the standard Windows 3389 RDP port.

All of this has worked fine for a while but lately I get several crashed of the VM itself and more often than I'd prefer a crash of the whole Mac.

I have analysed the activity monitor and when a VM is starting or being used there are spikes in the monitor where it says that a task is eating up to 300% of the CPU.

BUT the CPU usage in the VMs themselvs is below 10% most of the time. As well as overall Mac system usage is usually around 5%

I played around with the hardware allocated to the VM but nothing seems to help. Neither only giving them 1 core nor giving these machines 4. If, after a reboot of the Mac and I start only 1 VM the task spikes again to 300% CPU usage.

I've read to change in the VMX files the options to disable GL rendering and other graphic stuff, which I did, but to no avail.

What I've been wondering about is: is the Mac just not powerful enough to cope with this load? If so why do I have the CPU spike even with one VM.

Another thing is, since the craches are sometimes more sometimes less, I probably guess right that it is due to more people accessing the VMs with RDP and doing there stuff, like in using these VM.

Basically, how do I have to have these VM set up for them to work properly? I don't mind them being slow, I'd rather have no more crashes.

Thanks

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community,

I'm not a MAC user, but you may want to read https://planetvm.net/blog/?p=67185 to see whether this applies to your system.

André

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[ColoradoMarmot]

I've seen that too recently.  Couple of ideas:

- If you're on Mojave, make sure you're using Fusion 11.1.0 (not 11.1.1) and have applied the new 10.14.6 supplemental update.

- Disable system restore in the VM's, and disable any antivirus scanning.

- This one's strange, but it seemed to help.  Run activity monitor in each VM, leave the performance tab up showing the CPU trendline - if you can see a pattern (i.e. when the screen saver kicks in) you may get a hint.  What I was seeing was that it actually was a rotating load between the multiple VM's running, so it was hard to catch.  once I saw that, I had all the process lists up at the same time (tiled all the VM's), to catch the culprit.