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EdT201110141
Contributor
Contributor

VMWare Workstation 12.1.1 build 3770994 pro - guests freezing regularly

I am running workstation pro as above, under Windows 10 Enterprise. The host machine has 32 Gb RAM and is a high performance i7 workstation. The VMs are hosted on a Samsung 850 EVO SSD with firmware at the latest revision, and plenty of spare space on both the system and data drives.

The guest machines are Windows 7, mostly running 2Gb RAM. 

I am getting regular freezes of the running VMs where the screen activity stops but there is no problem switching between the frozen VMs using the tabs in the VM Workstation app.  This affects all currently running VMs.  After a minute or two, the machines revert to responding normally.

Other apps on the host are unaffected and there is no unusual activity in task manager to suggest that either CPU or memory resources are maxing out.

Does anyone have any words of wisdom regarding this problem?

Thanks

EdT

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n8az
Contributor
Contributor

I am seeing the EXACT same behavior on Windows desktop PCs and also on a Linux laptop. Essentially, the problem is consistent across Windows and Linux.

This problem is definitely introduced in this version. My guest VMs have the VMWare Tools installed, which makes no difference.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Neither of you mention how much host CPU vs. guest CPU resources have been used.

I've seen this issue when assigning too much CPU resources to the guests, making it difficult for the host to schedule the available CPU resources on the host.

If your guest has more as one vCPU assigned then first try running your guest with 1 vCPU and see if the freezing still happens.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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rrray
Contributor
Contributor

I had noticed this for this build as well, except my specs are considerably lower than yours.  I'm running vmware workstation 12 on arch linux and as shown in the attached photo, the load average, normally hovering around 0.20 spiked up to 25.0.  I'm not exactly sure how the vmware processes are divided up, but while running two vms, which my machine can normally handle with striking ease, I've found that the  portion from the selected row and above is eating up the lion's share of my resources -- the portion above the highlighted/selected row with the mem% of 19.7 contains everything I found related to one vmware command.  All the processes below belongs to the other VM running simultaneously.  Obviously, I'm going to have to run only one VM at a time now although that will disrupt my flow considerably.  That, or I downgrade to an older version of Workstation, which I suppose will work.  But I can't help but feel that this is a configuration issue.  With the less insane VM, I'm averaging around 0.32 for my load.  I have allocated 1GB to the innocuous VM whereas I've allocated between 4GB to 8GB of the 12GB of actual RAM to the troublesome VM.  I've also set up both VMs with 4 CPUs (running on an Intel Core i5  3470 cpu).  Thank you.2016-06-22-19-32-49.jpg

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EdT201110141
Contributor
Contributor

In my case I was seeing the freezing behaviour with 5 VMs running simultaneously, each using 2Gb RAM and 1 vCPU. That's a total of 10Gb RAM in a machine with 32 Gb available.  Did not see these issues on VMWare 11 with the same VM setup. Task manager on the host does not show any maxing out on either CPU or memory during these freezes - CPU generally below 60%.  The SSD these VMs run from has been upgraded in capacity recently and from Intel to Samsung technology but this has made no difference to these freeze episodes.

The freezing behaviour affects all running VMs, but does not appear to affect the ability to switch between them using the tabs. Most VMs come up with a black screen when selected during a freeze interval.

As this behaviour was not evident with earlier releases of VMWare workstation (neither V10 nor V11), I am inclined to suspect that the issue may lie in some housekeeping code within the V12 environment, as nothing is lost during the freeze, and normal operation eventually resumes.

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trboomer
Contributor
Contributor

Running too many VM's at once will often cause a freeze even on a beefy host system because you are sharing resources and spreading them too thin.

Even so, I have seen vmware workstation still freeze and indicate not responding. There are some basic things you might check though.

Try the following steps:

1. Make sure you use the recommended amount of memory for the system.

     (Default settings for memory usually work well which is 2 GB. Using more memory tends to make it swap to disk more often.)

2. Pre-allocate all of the virtual drive space for your VM's.

     (This prevents a delay every time the system tries to allocate more space for the virtual disk file. It also helps prevent fragmented disk files.)

3. Make sure you install VM Ware tools.

     (Without VMWare tools on the guest OS, it is very difficult to control the VM as it will frequently stop responding.)

These are just some basic things to try not a cure all for every situation.

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EdT201110141
Contributor
Contributor

@trboomer

First of all, I can confirm that the same setup has never resulted in a freeze situation on either VMWare workstation 9 or 10 or 11, even on lower spec'd hardware than I have now.  It only started on VMWare 12 at the build version shown.

I have 32 Gb of RAM and my VMs are indeed running 2Gb ram in each. The hard disks are preallocated, and VMWare tools are installed and maintained at the latest version always.  The VMs run on an SSD for improved performance.  To exclude the possibility that the SSD may be responsible, the Intel 500Gb SSD was replaced by a 1Tb Samsung unit with no difference to the freezing issue.

During the "freeze", task manager shows around 65% CPU on the vmware process - nothing else is using any significant CPU percentage.

Although running 5 machines pretty much guarantees regular freezes, I have seen them with only two or three VMs running.

The evidence points very much towards this being a VMWare issue.

Thank you for your suggestions though.

Cheers

EdT

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EdT201110141
Contributor
Contributor

Looks like 12.5 has the same issue.

Deep joy....

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