12.2.0 VMs really slow compared to 12.1.2, Monterey guest kernel panicking

[Piipperi]

Hi,

I updated VMware Fusion to 12.2.0 today and updated my virtual machines as well. I noticed that when I tried to load my Monterey virtual machine, it kept kernel panicking or freezing at boot screen after a kernel panic. Sometimes it happened during just normal boot, sometimes it got to the desktop. I didn't have VMware Tools installed yet, and to get them installed at all, I encountered at least 5 crashes just trying to access System Preferences to approve the kernel extensions. Oh, and loading literally anything took very long and the mouse is updating at maybe 15 - 20 fps.

I don't have Paravirtualized graphics enabled.

And on my Windows 10 VM, it also was really laggy compared to what I'm used to. CPU was almost always at 100% utilization (I have 4 cores allocated).  

[VMuser7759]

I tried all these with no luck. The amount of time required to troubleshoot these issues without success is beginning to irritate me. I have work to get done and the product is not working as anticipated, as well as it used to, and as advertised. Not sure where to go from here. VMware should be doing the heavy lifting on this rather than their paying customers.

Again, time is the factor for me. I don't want to be doing all of this troubleshooting while trying to meet customer schedules.

Very frustrating.

[VMuser7759]

Nope! No luck. I already had everything set up this way.

[jbravo23]

Experiencing the very same issues, more details follow. I recently migrated to Monterrey from BigSur, but because I am using an non Apple SSD in my Mac Pro, I had to install Monterrey in the original SSD Apple drive WHICH  forces a firmware update and then I could install Monterrey. This firmware update (I think) is the root of the problem, because when I reverted back to BigSur (using Carbon Copy Clonner) the problem persisted, so for me there was no way back. This issue seems very random, and times the VMs come up normally and some other times the CPU utilization hits the roof to the point the machine can not recover. It is like playing a slot machine, some times you need to keep on trying until things come up well (turning the whole machine down seems to helps).

A mitigation (NOT A CURE) is to reduce the number of cores allocated to the VMs. In BigSur (and previous versions of Fusion) I could aggressively assigng all the available cores to the single VM I run with no issues. In BigSur this increases the probability of having this panic CPU utilization.

[jbravo23]

This issue occurs regardless of that feature being unchecked

[jbravo23]

The feature is "Disable Side Channel Mitigation" unchecking that makes no difference

[DrMabuse123]

I really regret switching from Parallels to VMware … this VMs are so slow it’s pain using 12.2.x .. I also tried all possible options and combinations… no luck .. GUI performance is terrible compared to Parallels … 

[bighuskysf]

Sadly it seems pretty clear that Fusion has mostly become abandonware for VMware. No release last year and so far little to no indication if/when the next release will happen. The point releases have simply made performance worse and long running issues, especially for Linux VM's, such as broken audio/video/conferencing continue to be ignored (for these we had to switch to VirtualBox). After many years of supporting and purchasing the updates and lack of vision/communication we have to explore other solutions.

Also, Broadcom purchase doesn't bode well for the future of this desktop product.

[jontech]

Same issues in 12.2.4

Had to revert to older version, so it's not fixed yet. not sure what the holdup is, but I'm looking to go to Parallels as this point

[ColoradoMarmot]

There can be many different issues causing it, but looks like we have a tech preview dropping this week for both intel and ARM - might be worth trying that one out.

[indy913]

Fixed for me in the new technology preview. Worth giving that one a shot.

[michaelprescott]

Where is the new technology preview?

[ColoradoMarmot]

FusionPreview

[jontech]

tech preview fixed it for me, things running much better now