VMware - FIX FUSION 3 - NOW!!!!!!

[francis_carden]

I LOVED FUSION 2.0 - I ranted about it to 100's of people. Best thing since sliced bread is what I used to say.

Now I upgraded to Fusion 3 and it's TERRIBLE. Performance is a joke. I use this in my daily work and if I'm lucky it still works. I can't rely on it now for my demonstrations. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Being a user of Fusion 2 since it was released, I can say I rated the s/w as a 9 or 10 for enterprise use. Now I rate it as a 3.

I will be doing a Video this weekend of how bad it is and will post it online. Since no one from VMware seems to bother to read these forums or comment. I suggest they see what people said about united Airlines when THEY didn't listen...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

[admin]

Again, we appreciate as much information you can provide us.

As well as the information requested from HPReg, if possible attach the Support Information as well, or PM it to me. I'd be interesting in looking at the logs to see if there's any indication on what's hanging up.

Thanks everyone

[HPReg]

gkowalchuk, we have heard you. There is no need to post anymore, unless you have new information to provide.

The shear volume of people running Mac OS X who are experiencing slow

performance, not processor temperature and very explicate

dissatisfaction with v3

AS COMPARED TO v2

The number of people affected is a fraction of the user base. We just happen to have a large user base.

suggests this is not a RARE difficult problem to isolate.

You are wrong. We developers and QA engineers worked on Fusion 3 for 13 months. We have never seen this problem.

In fact, we are NOT INTERESTED in being test pilots for BETA software.

The product was not tested thoroughly enough before releasing it.

We had a private beta program with a beta 1, a beta 2, and a RC 1. We tested the software for 13 months as we were developing it.

We acknowledge that there is an issue, now please acknowledge that

1) We didn't know about it. We would never have shipped with it otherwise.

2) Now that you made us acutely aware of it, we are working on it.

[Nixta]

Caromero

The shear volume of people running Mac OS X who are experiencing slow

performance, not processor temperature and very explicate

dissatisfaction with v3

AS COMPARED TO v2, suggests this is not a RARE difficult problem to

isolate.

In fact, we are NOT INTERESTED in being test pilots for BETA software.

The product was not tested thoroughly enough before releasing it.

QED.

Look, we've made our points and VMWare are being as responsive as they might given the sheer weight of forum activity. The software has serious problems and you're not helping to work out what they might be.

We know 6 things thanks to you:

- Fusion 3 uses a lot of CPU for you.

- Fusion 2 did not.

- You have run it for 30 minutes at a time.

- You like saying Q.E.D.

- We know what MacBook revision you have.

- You press SHIFT A LOT (or maybe you use the 30-year old technique of CAPS LOCK).

Please please please stop telling us things over and over again just so you can use Q.E.D. You could easily have provided more constructive information in the time it's taken you to post all your replies.

[francis_carden]

I have some time after about 3pm EST today if you guys want to Webex into my machine since I can reproduce the problem pretty easily.

[matthewls]

Mostly xp-64 SP2, but also windows 7-64, xp32-sp3 and Ubuntu 7.10 64. They each run well--cooler and faster than 2.x.

In the background now, xp64 vm is taking 2.5% of my cpu, the temperature of the cpu is 53C, and the fan speed is 2056. The VM has been running for > 24h through several sleep/wake cycles. I just put it in foreground and t=53C, Fan 1887, cpu 3.5%.

The computer is a macbook pro 3.1, 2.4 GHz core 2 duo, 4GB RAM, 800 MHz bus, 320GB 7200 hard drive, boot prom mbp31.0070.b07.

The host is osx 6.1 running in 32 bit mode (only because I can't get the beast to load k64).

I was one of the beta testers and never had any problems with any of the 3.0 builds using 10.5.8 or 10.6.x.

MS

[Pat_Lee]

I am sorry you are seeing slow performance. As Regis said, it is working working incredibly well for most people. So, we are trying to find the common thread here so we can reproduce the problem such that we can address it. We have not seen this in house yet.

From what it sounds like, something is running inside the VM that is pegging the CPU or the disk. So, we need to determine what software in the VM is causing the problem.

Are you running Antivirus software in your VM? If so, uninstall it, restart and see if you can reproduce the problem. If you can't reproduce it, please let us know which one you used so we can try and figure out the problem.

We want to figure out what is going on to see how best we can address this issue to get you up and running with the performance we expect.

Best,

Pat

[rcardona2k]

@gkowalchuk

Hey I'm one of the non-VMware testers that ran all the machines I could under the beta: Windows 2000, Solaris 10, Fedora 11, Ubuntu 9.04/9.10, XP SP3 (production), Win7-x86/x64 several RC"s, RTM of each Home Premium, Enterprise, Professional and Ultimate. My main production machine is now Win7 x64 Ultimate and the temperature NEVER gets hot on my MBP. Further my CPU idles at 10-15% sometimes staying at 5%! I run all my guests in full screen mode almost entirely (immersion) with Shared Folders on every supported OS.

I was very much enjoying the speed and rising Window Performance Experience with every build, the Aero support, so I have 3D enabled. My networking is all wireless 802.11n (300Mbps) or AT&T 3G Quicksilver USB data card via NAT.

My Mac is a 2.26Ghz Unibody MacBook Pro 5,5, 4GB RAM, 120GB HDD, 256MB GeForce 9400M. I did have OS hangs due to firmware 1.7 so I backed down to 1.6 until Performance Update 1.0 was released then I re-upgraded to 1.7. I have had no hangs since then.

I'll update this posting tonight with a screenshot of Win7 x64 running with Activity Monitor and smc fan control showing the temperature on my Mac.

Sorry so many other installations are slow or problematic, mine definitely is NOT. I leave Fusion 3 running 24x7 the whole time, even through sleeps, etc. please do not say this product was not tested at all.

[gkowalchuk]

Fusion v2 worked 100% with Windows XP + AVG virus software - no scanning

Downloaded the v3 UPGRADE

Fusion v3 over heats the Mac processors - HOT - FANs go to HIGH speed.

Downloaded FUSION Evaluation (full-400mb) with nothing else (no virus

option)

Installed full version with full license key and removed AVG software.

Will test new FULL download with no extra product options and report

findings.

thanks

[gkowalchuk]

Did you do a FULL installation of v3 or an upgrade?

[rcardona2k]

Good question - initially upgraded from 2.0.6 to betas under OS X 10.5. Since OS X 10.6 came out, I fresh installed Fusion 3.0

[admin]

Thank you gkowalchuk, we look forward to your findings.

Francis thank you, your Service request is now setup and we'll conduct the webex shortly as planned.

[sternf]

After a fresh install my Fusion actually loads a new build from 3.0.0 (193526) to 3.0.0 (204229). So try to update now. Good luck.

[varase]

Slow VMWare Fusion 3, processors at 100%.

MacBook Pro 17 (early 2008)@2.5ghz, 6GB RAM, 500GB WD HD, MacOS X 10.6.1, 1900x1200 display, NVidea GEForce 8600M GT w/512MB.

Running WinXP Pro SP3 with 2GB memory and one processor and a 32GB C: drive. Six shares in My Computer, two in offline disks (which are at home), three on the Mac (in 'vmware-hosts'), and one on the network at work. Normally run Windows NATted with the Mac (so I can VPN in using the Mac native Cisco client). Virus protection via McAfee Security Center from Comcast (9.15 build 9.15.135).

When slowdown occurs, systray appears affected with a frame around the systray icons and Start menu appears unresponsive. Constantly switching between normal, full screen, and unity mode appears to temporarily reanimate frozen systray icons.

[matthewls]

I've described my setup and good vmware3 performance, but want to add that I don't run any antivirus software, in case that's a common cause of problems.

[Mikero]

varase, did you upgrade from Fusion 2? If so, was it 2.0.6 or 2.0.5?

If your vmware-vmx process is 100%, what does Task Manager say in Windows at this time? I would assume something in there is also using 100% CPU, which in turn is causing the vmx process to do the same.

For everyone in general, sometimes this performance degredation is the result of outdated Tools, which often can be resolved by uninstalling Tools, restarting the Guest, then re-installing Tools.

You can verify which version of Tools is installed by double clicking the VMware icon in the system Tray and gonig to the About tab.

For Fusion 3, it should say tools is version 8.2.3 build 204229

[wiizzaarrd]

Host system: MacBook Pro 2.5 GHz, 6 GB, 256 SSD, Snow Leopard 10.6.1

Vmware Fusion Guests: Ubuntu 7.10, Backtrack 3, Slitaz, FreeNAS, Android, Moblin, Microsoft Windows XP Pro (2 guests), Microsoft Windows 7 RC, Microsoft Vista

Here are some thoughts and some problems with some fixes/workarounds.

1. The upgrade from Vmware Fusion 2.06 to 3.00 demonstrated some issues. First was a BSOD when rebooting XP after the auto install/upgrade of the Vmware tools. After several guest reboots, quitting Vmware Fusion all together seemed to resolve this BSOD and have not had this behavior again. Other OS with tools, like Ubuntu, were problem free. This behavior was the same on both XP guests I have so I suspect a Vmware issue.

2. The guests running seemed to be slowed periodically by OS X spinning "beachball" for Vmware Fusion. Other application not affected when this occurred to Vmware Fusion. After some investigation, it seemed the the OS X mds process seemed to spike whenever this occurred to Vmware Fusion. This process is related to Spotlight. For some reason unknown to me, the upgrade of Vmware Fusion eliminated the exclusion of the Vmware folder that contains all Vmware Fusion guests form the Spotlight Privacy System Preference. After rebooting and then excluding this folder, the spinning "beachball" has not occurred anytime this afternoon on any guest and the mds process seems well behaved.

3. After browsing through the forums a suggestion is to ensure a reboot of the system after the upgrade. While not required by the install, it is recommended.

4. On the performance and Windows 7, after running the performance index tool, the results seem quite good. The low score as expected is the gaming index and the high score is disk probably due to the disk being SSD. As a side note, I have found that better performance is obtained from Microsoft systems if sufficient memory is allocated AND the page file is eliminated all together. As long as there is sufficient memory, the page file is not needed and its writes compete with normal writes to the disk image by the OS and the workload in the guest.

Hope this helps.

[jasimon9]

I am in the process of downgrading to 2.0.6, but for a different reason: constant BSODs in the XP VMs.

It was suggested in this thread to open a support request, but as far as I know, such things are not available to me. Can anyone open a support request, or do you have to have a support contract?

[Mikero]

Users who purchased Fusion 3 are entitled to free email support, no support contract required 😃

We also have a paid option which includes phone support.

These are new offerings since Fusion 3 launched.

[gkowalchuk]

Uninstalled Fusion v3 upgrade.

Installed Fusion v3 FULL evaluation - with no Mcafee option.

Launched XP with no virus software. Same slow performance with HOT processors and FAN go to HIGH speed.

:smileyblush: Spoke with Apple about OS X v10.6 in November

:smileyblush: Apple recommends upgrading to Snow Leopard (64bit) before running Fusion v3

So there you have it, the 32bit OS works with Fusion v2 but not Fusion v3.

GAME OVER.

[francis_carden]

RIGHT NOW - Seems what we did is working. Both VM's VERY FAST.

All we did was update ALL (not just one) VM's with the VERY LATEST TOOLS. Update tools on task bar is not good enough and might not even work. You have to click SETTINGS and INSTALL VMWARE tools from VMWARE menu.

Try this and report back. For the first few minutes, one of the VM's was still sluggish!! However, I just rebooted and brought both VM's back from suspend and both are lightening fast. I'll keep an eye on this. Of course they may be multiple un/related problems and it may go slow again later but for now.... QUICK QUICK QUICK.

A symptom we found showed the TASKMGR task manager program in XP, taking 99% CPU for taskmgr itself... If you are running slow, and see taskmgr at 90% or more, constantly, make sure you have the latest tools on all running VM's and check back here..

GOOD LUCK.

Francis