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

[mshaw00]

Pat,

I had a clean version of snow leapoard no previous version of Fusion on the system and a completely new install of windows 7 x64. I have a new macbook pro and "incredibly fast" / "amazingly fast" are not two words that come to mind. Keeping this to a civilized conversation I will keep what I say about it to myself. There are very serious issues and one comes to the conclusion of either those 10,000 beta testers didn't do their job, you changed something that has caused these drastic differences in performance or it's just simply a way to save some face while trying to fix the issues. As you can see from my post above performance isn't the only issue. The pc2mac and stand alone converter tool doesn't work and I have the most perfect setup for it to. I even went so far in my last attempt to down ever single process and service running which wasn't a requirement for windows.

I understand you are working on the issues, but I have never in my 10+ years of owning a business seen the response of so many people and have it claimed as only a few isolated incidences.

[mshaw00]

Nbe,

We rant on here because we already have support cases that go un-answered for days at a time only to have useless more time wasting info provided to us, as if we are the beta testers. Really what is the point of posting a comment like that?

[nbe]

What's the point in ranting here if you already have support tickets going? It doesn't change anything, it's just being lame and rude. Period. However, most people are only ranting and haven't done things like reinstalling the Tools or submitting a support ticket (that's how serious those issues are...). I've seen a lot of threads here that start out as a rant but are eventually resolved and marked as such. In other words, the ranting was completely unnecessary, they could have gotten the problem fixed without the rant. Luckily there are some threads with people explaining the issues they are having and people replying with (possible) solutions which is how it should be. It's about being civilised and showing you do have manners. You shouldn't be asking what my point is, you should be asking what point your replies have. In the end discussions like these only pollute topics so we should be going back on topic.

[mshaw00]

NBE,

You posted a rant about all the rants? How is that any better than the people you are posting about? In my opinion that is worse, those people are upset and have a right to voice about something that doesn't work as promised instead of jumping through a bunch of hoops just to get it to work.. You take the time to read the rants and then more time to write about them? Surely you must have a lot of time on your hand. All my post's have been about issues that I have submitted in support tickets that they can't resolve so I post here to see if there are other alternatives or suggestions, probably much like the others users in this forum. That is what this forum is for after all.

I see you have taken the line as VMware has that all these issues are so simple to solve, yet fail to acknowledge like VMware fails to, there are more issues than just those very simple ones. If only the world was this simple. I envy you for having such a simple outlook on things.

Please save your off-topic posts for somewhere that is more appropriate, maybe like a person blog? That way people that care to read it will, and not have all this useless information sent to their mailbox. Please post something useful or just don't post at all in this thread I'm sure the other subscripted users would appreciate that.

I'm sure this will illicit some other rant of yours about ranting, but it will fall on deaf ears as I have made my point.

FYI: Much better post would have been to refer to what VMware has referred to multiple times in this forum and this thread. Duplicate info, but some may find it useful.

[modular747]

I see you're ranting against ranting about rants. I believe we can take this at least 5 more layers of ranting, possibly breaking a record. Go for it!!!

[wwjjss]

I'd like to cast a vote in favor of the rants. I have been immersed in frustration over the past week grappling with my F3 problems; I'm bitter, and seeing these rants... helps me cope. More constructively, prospective purchasers can see these rants, and the specter of that helps get VM focused on the fix, which they absolutely need to be.

I say rant loud, rant proud.

[matthewls]

I must say that the rants have got me to try Sun's virtual box. I was surprised to see it run Win7-64 a bit faster than VM3...but neither sound nor aero flip3d worked in VBox, which work fine in VMFusion3 (all I did was to start up my vmdk in VBox, so that may be why sound failed, but aero is not possible afaik).

As Pat wrote, both are impressive virtual machine platforms. I'm grateful that VM3 works so well on my machine, and hope the bugs that are triggering the rants get solved soon.

[marcelol]

Well, I've got some updated info....and a possible culprit.

I took the idea from someone else, and uninstalled the AVG Anti-Virus 9 Free Edition I had, rebooted, and........not only is the VM up and running, but I'm actually running a Defrag on the VM's disk as I'm typing this in a browser on the OSX side. The VM has burped a couple of times, but its still alive and kicking.

Also, a questions....has anyone had a problem making a backup copy of their VM ( given VMF isn't running, of course ! )? I tried to make a backup of the VMDK, and I got an "Error 0" and was unable to make a backup copy of the VM.

So.....perhaps someone needs to try testing with AVG 9 ?? ( Remember I upgraded from 8.5 to 9, under 2.0.6, and then upgraded to VMF 3 )

[Mikero]

What sort of settings did you give to AVG?

I've got it installed on my Win 7 VM on my lowly MBP2,2 w/2GB-RAM and the x1600 video card, but have not tested it (and I'm sure my settings are bit light... i tell it to basicaly never scan unless I ask)

[marcelol]

When I had installed AVG 8.5 ( remember I upgraded to 9 ..and then upgraded to VMF 3 )...I didn't give it any special settings, except to turn off the automatic scheduled scans ( which I checked when I was still under VMF 2.0.6 to make sure it didn't turn anything back on ).

So far the Smart Defrag is still running.

Update: I also notice ( as when I was entering this and the previous messages ), that OSX is running a little "skippy"

For those who hadn't read my earlier specs post...my MBP has 4GB ( split in half between VM and OSX ).

[polaris160]

In case you haven't noticed, this is a support site. Many people, myself included (and presumably MShaw) have already opened tickets. Some of us have yet to receive a response. By posting in a forum, we're airing our concerns, and perhaps seeing if anyone else is experiencing the issues at hand. This is the purpose of a support forum. No one's being rude, no one is personally attacking anyone at VMWare. They've acknowledged the problems, and are apparently working on it.

I am not some kid that just started using virtualization yesterday. I've used VMWare products for quite a few years as I've already stated, and have been personally responsible for thousands of dollars spent on their products. I'm free to voice disappointment in something. No company is infallible.

I'm not using AVG or Security Essentials. My machine is on a business network running corporate AV from Trend. I've reinstalled Tools numerous times.

If the "rants" bother you so much, kindly exit the thread. No one is forcing you to read them. If it works for you, then super. The problems are not an isolated incidents, however.

[Bookworm370]

After reading all the AVG posts, I also backed off the automatic scans and non-critical tests. I left Resident Sheild running as I really need some level of virus protection.

Once I did that I definitely noticed a pickup of my VM performance.

I also increased memory on the Win Xp VM to 1Gig, turned off the swap file (no page file) and that has significantly improved speed.

I only use my Windows VM on items such as Outlook so I basically have one or 2 win programs running so memory util is not an issue.

[Pat_Lee]

If you are looking for a free Antivirus product to replace AVG Free, I personally recommend Microsoft Security Essentials.

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

It is free and works well according to the following survey:

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2009/11/16_antivirus_programs_compared_none_very_good_1.htm...

Hope that helps!

Pat

[nbe]

@mshaw00: Wow, never seen that much selective reading before causing you to not understand the point I was making: if you're unhappy it is perfectly alright to voice that but don't do it by simply ranting but do it a lot more politely. This entire discussion would not have been started if people were being politely in the first place! Remember that you get more things done if you're polite than if you keep on ranting. It also does not solve the problem.

I see you've resorted to these forums to get help which is fine but the only thing I see is a rant from you without any information that helps others in solving your problem. You're not the only one doing that. A lot of information is missing and there is a lot of information on performance issues on this forum which has a search and browse functionality built in (i.o.w. use it!). I haven't seen a lot of people in this thread replying that they found $information on this forum (or elsewhere) and that they tried it with $result. That is not helpful in understanding the issue and trying to solve it. So please save your offtopic posts/rants, be polite and post at least some information about what you did, etc. so the issues can be resolved. There are issues regarding performance and most of them luckily are easy to fix, some of them unfortunately are not. VMware seems to not understand those last issues and need more information to resolve them. They can't do that when people are only ranting, they need information so they can duplicate setups and see what's going on. As you can tell from this thread alone there seem to be quite some users having issues regarding AVG. I'd call that very useful information for VMware to investigate further.

I suggest you and others read and follow :smileyalert: the following document (which is at the top of the Fusion forum...): http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-1070

@wwjjss: you should see a shrink or some other form of counceling if you need this forum (which is intended to answer question and help people solve issues with Fusion) to help you cope.

@matthewls: if you're using Parallels or VirtualBox you need to uninstall the VMware Tools, reboot the vm and than install the tools from Parallels/VirtualBox. This will give you things like audio. VirtualBox can't do the Aero things Parallels 5 and Fusion 3 can as it lacks that kind of 3D support. I think it is a great product to keep your eye on, it's got a lot of potential (especially when they fix that horrible UI).

@Mikero: to add to the story of marcelol: I have been running Fusion 2.0.5 and upgraded AVG 8.5 to 9 in that XP SP3 vm. When the Fusion private beta started I upgraded that Fusion to the private beta as well as the vm's (incl. the VMware Tools). I did a custom install as I do not want the part that scans weblinks and searchengine stuff so the only installed parts are the on access/on demand scanner and the e-mail scanner. As opposed to marcelol my vm's are running fine regarding performance. I also disabled the automatic scans, I like to do those manually.

[marcelol]

Maybe I'll try installing AVG 9 again ( I'm not a fan of MS's Security Essentials to be honest with you, even on an UN-virtualized system ), but disabling the auto-scans ( which I know were not running when I ran into my initial problems )....I think it has to do more with how it hooks into the file system and performs it's scans during read's/write's as integrity checks ( file systems are something I know more than a little about so it seems a logical place to check byte stream signatures for malicious code ).

Anyway, this all takes me back to when I first upgraded from 1.0.3 to 2.0. I used to have AVG 8 under VMF1 and it ran fine, then I upgraded to AVG8.5 under VMF2, and the VM became NOTICEABLY slower, but passable ( I could no longer run the VM using both core's, something I could do just fine under VMF1 ). Now, it makes me wonder if it was the upgrade from 8.0 to 8.5 AVG that brought about this issue. Maybe it's something that's been around for a while, but VMF had enough bandwidth in it's emulation to be able to "mask the underlying symptom" of the problem. Up until version 9, where whatever it was doing used up too much of the wiggle room to maintain synchronization between writing to the guest emulated disk, and the host disk file.

I'll try what I said, tonight, and report back. In the meantime, everybody chill....take a deep breath. Maybe have a cold beverage. It's Friday, and it's 5PM SOMEWHERE.

[MaLaun]

Hallo Eric,

i'm one of the frusrated ones.

after downgrading to 2.0.6 everything went fine. Now that i upgraded the mac to 10.6.2 i decided to retry fusion 3.

If you look through this forum you'll find specifics to my machine. Don't want to post them again and again and again...

Host:

1) I formated the disc, and did a clean install of snow leopard (US language German Keyboard)

2) Online update to 10.6.2

3) NO OTHER SW INSTALLED

4) Installed Fusion 3

5) Copied my VM's to the new clean system.

VM's XP WIN7 WIN7x64 SuseLinux10.3:

1) On windows vm's uninstalled vmware tools.

2) on windows vm's installed clean new vmware tools fusion 3 and on XP set buffering to on, on win7's srt buffering to auto. Change vmware type to win7 and win7x64 on the Win7 VM's ( were set at vista with fu 2.0.6 )

3) Linux VM no vmware tools installed

Test:

1) booted HOST

2) booted LinuxVM

3) ran benchmarks ( OK perfermonce good but not better then 2.0.6): shutdown vm

4) booted HOST

5) booted XP VM

6) ran benchmarks ( OK performance app 8-10% slower then 2.0.6)

7) SUSPENDED XP!

😎 booted host

9) booted win7 vm

10) ran benchmarks (OK Performance good)

11) shutdown VM

12) booted win7x64 VM

13) ran benchmarks (OK performance slightly better then 2.0.6)

OK I WAS SATISFIED AND DECIDED TO USE FU3

THEN...

1) rebooted HOST

2) started Fusion 3

3) restarted the suspended XP vm which took a long time

4) XP vmruns fine... then all of a sudden INTENSE DISC ACTIVITY and System locks up for app. 15 Minutes (I looked at the clock)

5) After disc activity stops the XP VM is shutdown ???? ( what is happening here ????

6) REBOOT HOST

7) Start Fusion but no vm started -> INTENSE DISC ACTIVITY

😎 Stop Fusion disc activity = none

9) Start Fusion but no vm started -> INTENSE dISC Activity

10) WAIT for 20 MINUTES but disc activity still going mad.

11) Stop fusion.

DEINSTALL FUSION 3

DOWNGRADE 2.0.6

REBOOT HOST

START VM's --> wondefull everything works well again witjh no erratic wild disk activity.

All vm's run well with 3.0 vmware tools under fusion 2.0.6. EVEN AERO runs well and for sure quicker with fusion 2.0.6 then with fusion 3!!

what is happening????

Hardware macbook pro 2.5 ghz approximatly 8 weeks old. 4 GB ram Nvidia 9400M. 250 gig disk. It's a std off the shelf 15" macbook pro.

EDIT : no anti virus SW running in the VM's or the host at the time i did the above steps.

[matthewls]

Yes, I uninstalled the vmware tools and replaced them with the VB equivalent. Sticking with Fusion too, though VB keeps improving.

Some important reminders have come up now about how I optimize my windows VMs.

1. Turn off the swap (0) in windows VMs.

2. Turn off all sleep, screen savers, etc.

3. No AV.

4. Optimize the RAM for each machine (e.g. for xp64, I give 1GB to allow Dragon plenty of ram, otherwise less RAM is more performance).

5. Turn off all useless/unneeded services both within the guest VM and host connections (e.g. CD, USB, network, 3D, sharing, etc.).

6. Turn on items in 5 as needed.

I don't worry about AV in the VMs because I usually keep them off line.

Secure browsing I do with either a linux guest or a windows VM w/ a non-persistent drive.

[nbe]

@MaLaun: this may be a long shot but...have you tried putting the folder where you store the vm's in Spotlight's privacy tab so it will be excluded in Spotlight (and thus its indexing)? I've seen elsewhere on the forum that this resolved heavy disk activity for someone else. Also check if there is any antivirus or other scanning software that is running at that time (Windows's indexing service or the new Windows Desktop Search 4.0 which you can get via Windows Updates).

[MaLaun]

@MaLaun: this may be a long shot but...have you tried putting the folder where you store the vm's in Spotlight's privacy tab so it will be excluded in Spotlight (and thus its indexing)? I've seen elsewhere on the forum that this resolved heavy disk activity for someone else. Also check if there is any antivirus or other scanning software that is running at that time (Windows's indexing service or the new Windows Desktop Search 4.0 which you can get via Windows Updates).

OF COURSE I DID. Look a the original thread that handled the 'mds' issue. You'll find a few of my posts there :). The folder where all the VM's are stored are in the privacy list of spotlight.

NO ANTI VIRUS. And no the Windows desktop search indexer couldn't be running as none of the VM's was running. All that was needed was to start the fusion GUI with no VM's started!