VMWare 9 network speed issues

[PhilGibbons]

Im seeining a strange network problem in my VMWare 9 guest OS's.

Everything ws working fine, then all of a sudden all network access to a specific (real) server seems to be throttled to 200-300kb/s (in either direction).

Ive tried windows filesharing (explorer) ftp and other programs - they all seem to be suffering the same throughput problem.

My guest is OS Windows 7 x64 and I'm using bridged networking and have a 1Gbit connection.

My host OS is Windows 8 RTM, i5 2500 CPU, 16gb RAM, nVidia GT450

Traffic to other (real) hosts is still fine and i havnt touched the new VMWare network throttle settings.

I've tried rebooting the guest, rebooting the host, restarting the VMWare services on the host but still traffic to this one machine seems to be limited.

Other guest VM's also suffer the exact same problem to the same server while other servers are still fine. Its as if the VMware 9 has decided that all traffic to a specific IP will be limited.

Ive upgraded my host OS to windows 8 so I have been using the VMWare 9 trial while my company purchases liceses (which Im assuered will be here this week). I have used VMware 7 since it came out on Windows 7 and Windows Vista and have never had this problem.

This is causing me serious doubts about VMWare 9 - is it a known problem>? Is there any solution? Unfortunatly I cant go back to VMWare 7 as it does not play well with Windows 8 as the host OS.

Thanks,

Phil

Message was edited by: PhilGibbons, added host machine specs

[BradI100]

I can't say I've seen this problem in my environment.  But a few guesses.

1. Is the server that you are having trouble accessing using half-duplexing on the NIC?
2. is your host or guest PC hibernating or going to sleep at any time?  (I've seen performance issues after returning to a PC that's been asleep.)
3. Do you have a Windows 7 PC nearby where you could install vmplayer and copy over a guest to see if you get the same results?

[PhilGibbons]

Hi Brad,

As I said, it was working fine to the server then it just slowed right down. Im doing a lot of snapshotting and resuming (testing installation kits). The host never sleeps but the guest may have done.

I copied the guest to my laptop (also Win 8 and VM9) and it worked fine at exactly the same time my desktop was slow, but I will try and find a win 7 machine (yes we have many) to try at the same time too.

The server - I dont think its half duplex but i will check tomrrow. Given the fact that it was fine on another VM9 machine at the same time, I dont *think* the server is at fault but I cant really rule it out completely as I just dont understand whats going on.

I will try and update this post tomrrow when I can run some more tests.

Thanks,

Phil

[PhilGibbons]

OK, I have tried VMPlayer on Win 7. Actually I had Win 7 dual boot with Win 8 still so it was easy and all on the same host hardware.

I installed the latest player on Win 7 and loaded the exact same guest VM.

It worked. There was no delay, copying 200Mb was near instant (as usual).

However, back in Win 8, with the same VM again, still dire performance - that same 200Mb - well I gave up (see below).

Ive also been getting lots of these errors from the host VMware app.... The only way to continue is to click discardf or revert to previous snapshot

I dont know if its relevant to this network performance (I suspect not) but when I get them, its usually after the VM has suspended itself - I just revert to the last snapshot so no big deal right now (although if I didnt have a recent snapshot it might be a problem!)

Im going to re-install VMWare now as our licenses have just come through - maybe that will fix it!

Thanks,

Phil

EDIT: The re-install didnt make any difference

The problematic server's network adapter is set to AUTO in the speed/duplex settings. Im pretty sure its 1Gpb & Full duplex but I cant actaully see anywhere to confirm that. Its a Dell Poweredge box with 2 Broadcom network adapters (only one in use) with Win 2008 x86.

The VM host machine's network adapter (Realtek PCIe onboard Asus P8Z77-V-LX) is in Auto also - I can however force that to 1Gps Full so I will try that.

Only the VM9 Guets on my Win8 host display this problem. On my Win8 Laptop with VM9 its ok with the same VM's. No one else has moved to Win 8 or VMWare 9 yet - and perhaps they should stick with VMWare 7 until this issue is resolved because if our entire team have this problem, I can see productivity being an issue!

[PhilGibbons]

Bingo!

It seems forcing my VM Host machines network to 1Gps/Full and turing off all the "green" ethernet settings may have fixed the problem.

I will monitor and hopefully not have to report anything further.

Thanks for the suggestions and ideas that made me think a bit more about this

[BradI100]

Glad to have helped.  Hope it stays working now.

[PhilGibbons]

OK the problem returned already!

However, it seems if I disable the network adapter on the HOST and then re-enable it, the problem is fixed. That explaions why it fixed it earlier as changing the host adapters settings caused a simula cycle of the host network adapter...

So the problem persists, but there is a workaround (although I dont like disabling/re-enabling my main LAN adapter, at least I can continue working at full speed).

Any ideas as to what the problem may be? I believe I have the latest Realtek network drivers but I will have to check... Perhaps the problem is on the host device drivers!

Thanks,

Phil

[BradI100 · Accepted solution]

I would start by making a snapshot of the troubled VM.  Then I'd power it down and remove the nic.  Then I'd add a new nic to see if that would bind better.

In other words, your virtual nic may be corrupt

[PhilGibbons]

When it happens again, I'll give it a go, but when the provlem happes it effects ALL VM's on that host so I suspect its a host issue rather than a guest issue, especially because disabling the HOST nic and re-enabling it seems to fix the problem.