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Luminatio
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VM became extremely slow after upgraded to macOS 10.14.6 [Officially Solved]

------------20190827--------------------------

This issue is officially solved with Apple’s macOS 10.14.6 supplemental update.

Thanks to all of you.

A thumb down to Apple’s software team...

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After I upgraded my 2 MBP to 10.14.6, all of the Windows VMs became extremely slow and stuck at the login screen...

The VMs are set to use TPM, I don't know if it's relevant.

Anyone came across the same situation?

Now I cannot continue my work...really frustrating...

—————20190727————-

I’m updating this for convenient reference.

Status: This issue has not been solved yet.

Many users encountered this issue which leads to completely unusable of VMs.

And we got some replies from Fusion developers, you could help developers identify issues by replying your hardware models/is disk encrypted or have the VM encrypted etc.

We have some reports that some users found out that if set the memory of VM to 2G could help.

Re: VM became extremely slow after upgraded to macOS 10.14.6

If you don’t need to use much memory and can work with it, you might try set the memory to 2G, or maybe less than 4G is also okay?

Still we are waiting for an official solution.

------------20190809--------------------------

Thanks to ksc

Re: VM became extremely slow after upgraded to macOS 10.14.6

I updated to Fusion 11.1.1, confirmed that I can login to the system, and desktop shows normally.

As ksc says, it is a workaround which I'm not quite sure if I can trust it to do my work in it....

At least, I'm able to get my works out and change to other options now.

I'll mark this issue as resolved for now, but keep the [Workaround Released] tag in the subject.

Looks like it would take quite some time for a real fix, I'll keep an eye on this.

消息编辑者为:Liam

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SpikeeFix
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Oh, and I am only running 2 GB of RAM already and am unencrypted.

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SpikeeFix
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Called VMWare and told them version 11 was unusable (190% CPU). They told me they couldn't start a ticket for support unless I bought the program. Why would I buy a program when the trial doesn't work?!?!?

So I just downloaded Parallels 15 and am in love. Wow - that thing flies like the rest of my MacBook. Smiley Happy

Sorry, VMWare - a 12 year long relationship seems to be over (and I had tried Parallels out of frustration in the past).

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lfreitag
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I am so happy to hear that Parallels 15 is working that well!.  I will probably switch to Parallels 15.  I have waited for a true fix from VMware  long enough. Can you please remind me of the type of machine, memory, etc that you are running? Also did you import or share a bootcamp windows partition ?

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rossco_au
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Thanks DaveP​ for your earlier suggestions (quoted below for convenience of others)

I'm running a couple of big encrypted Win10 VMs (8GB RAM, two cores, both have Visual Studio 2017 - which is a CPU hog) on an iMac at the moment with DaveP's suggestions :

  • All VMDKs are 2GB split to try and avoid the 2GB file bug in macOS 10.14.1
  • Named VMEM file switched off by adding these 2 lines to ~/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/config (create it if it isn't present):

mainmem.backing = "swap"

mainmem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"

So far it's going well.  I'm on Fusion 11.1.1 on Mojave 10.14.6 + Supplemental update.  The VMs are VMWare encrypted on an unencrypted HFS SSD.  With these settings the VMs seem more responsive than they were on 11.1/10.14.5.

I rely on VMWare Fusion on a daily basis so I can work.  I don't upgrade VMWare Fusion or OS versions immediately - I wait a bit to see how people go as I can't afford downtime.  Also I have two MacOS installs that I alternate between.  One on the internal drive and another on an external SSD.  I use the one I'm not actively using as a test bed - i.e. when there's an update I upgrade the one I haven't been using and check it works OK.  That way if there's major issues I can quickly revert to a known working version (on the other drive).

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chucker23n
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Apple has confirmed reproduction and identified the bug on their end. No timeline for a fix shared yet.

Since 10.14.6 is likely the last release in the 10.14.x cycle, I'm guessing that means 1) we might see a fix in 10.15.0 if we're lucky, and possibly not before a point release of 10.15.x, and 2) this flat out won't get fixed for 10.14.x users. (Which is problematic because 10.15 will drop some compatibility.)

  • Named VMEM file switched off by adding these 2 lines to ~/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/config (create it if it isn't present):

mainmem.backing = "swap"

mainmem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"

Hm. So far so good?

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rossco_au
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After a full day now... using DaveP's suggestions... all good.  VMs stayed responsive all day with heavy usage in one (lots of compiling and debugging CPU intensive code) and still feels more responsive than before.  I used to get a lot of beach balling for a few seconds at times on 10.14.5 with 11.1 and this hasn't happened at all today.  Forgot to mention I do have graphics acceleration on.  Used Chrome a little bit in a VM and didn't see any issues - but it wasn't heavy usage.

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Wegener22
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Sadly, DaveP's kind recommendations don't work for me.

Any VM (unencrypted) with RAM higher than 2GB become terrible slow or hangs,

especially with my external Firewire-SSD. But not only. Even simply tiny fresh Win10-x86

installations without any additional features.

Sorry, I'm done.

Yesterday I switched to Par*****. And I'm pretty impressed by the performance.

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lfreitag
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Are you using Parallels 15? And did you import or share a bootcamp windows partition?

I an desperate for a fix.

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Wegener22
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Yes, 15.0.0. It was released some days ago.

I installed Windows from the scratch.

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MoonDogg80
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VMware Fusion Pro 11.1.1 is not working for me on MacOS 10.14.6

MBP 2018 15" i9 32GB RAM 1TB SSD Radeon Pro 560X 4GB

All windows VM's lock up system, no matter settings. None are encrypted. Mac is not encrypted.

Linux VM's work fine.

Edit: Did not mean to come across just complaining. I have tried the suggestions so far with no success. But want to get this fixed so am following this thread looking/waiting for a fix. If you have anything you want/need me to try with my specific config let me know and I would be glad to do it. 

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lfreitag
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Thank you.  I will try Parallels 15 this weekend.

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ksc
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  • Named VMEM file switched off by adding these 2 lines to ~/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/config (create it if it isn't present):

mainmem.backing = "swap"

mainmem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"

The mainMem.useNamedFile setting is Windows-only.

The "swap" path isn't implemented on MacOS (it's under ifdef linux because it uses 'swapfs'); on MacOS "swap" will fall back to "unnamed" which is the encrypted-VM behavior.

An Apple release ... I would be surprised if Apple leaves this broken, but speculating about the schedules of large products is always hard.

We (VMware) have also been working on a different approach - effectively, implementing that "swap" backing. Looks very positive, but not release-quality yet.

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rossco_au
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Thanks ksc

So you're saying that at the moment these settings have no effect?

I'm seeing good performance (and it feels even better than on 10.4.5/11.1) with multiple a 8GB RAM two core Win 10 encrypted VM.  I'm on an 2017 Quad core iMac with 40GB RAM.  Maybe there was some other issue that was slowing my machines down on previous versions?  They were usable on previous versions except for getting beachballs for a few seconds every now and then but now they seem snappier and no beach balls.

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ksc
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With encrypted VMs or the "unnamed" setting: total usage of >2GB of memory causes every new page to become slow.

With normal VMs (the "named" setting): total usage doesn't matter, but active memory does. As MacOS converts active memory to inactive memory, it will drop below 2GB and speed up again.

The "useNamedFile" setting is definitely a no-op. The "swap" setting (or "unnamed", which is what "swap" will fall back to un MacOS) will cause normal VMs to act like encrypted VMs... that should make things worse, but it may make things better in some scenarios. And with the Fusion 11.1.1 workaround, things are definitely better for encrypted VMs.

There are a lot of variables here - total host memory (>32GB and this path doesn't trigger), total system load (without memory pressure, active->inactive conversion slows down). It's entirely possible some permutation happens to work for some people. But right now, there's no answer that will work for everyone - until either Apple or VMware can release something else. (We're working on it.)

rossco_au
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Thanks again ksc

Appreciate yours and everyone's efforts at VMWare to work around this issue and keep us up to date.

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ColoradoMarmot
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Thanks for the update, and it explains some of the variance. 

Important nuance here, total host memory > 32 GB or >= 32 GB?  There's a lot of exactly 32 GB machines out there 😉

ksc
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total host memory >= 32GB does not see this problem. <32GB has the slowdown(s).

MacOS has a kernel command line which takes parameters that can be used to synthetically reduce memory size ... maxmem=32767 shows the problem, maxmem=32768 does not.

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ColoradoMarmot
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And it looks like we might have just gotten a fix:

"- Fixes an issue that may degrade performance when working with very large files"

Apple Releases tvOS 12.4.1, watchOS 5.3.1, and a macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Supplemental Update - MacRumor...

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MoonDogg80
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I hope so... going to try and report back.

MoonDogg80
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In my testing so far with my configuration this has fixed it. I can do everything I have been trying to do with out it locking up.

Host: MBP 2018 i9 32GB Ram 1TB SSD 560X GPU

Guest: Windows 10 1903  4 CPU  8GB Ram

I am able to connect to my VPN, open shares remotely, open remote desktops from the remote network, I even turned unity on it is still working flawlessly.

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