Host faults when using a VM over a network drive (smb)

[arimicci]

Hi all,

I have to solve this problem of mine:

On a Mac mini running High Sierra 10.13.5 have installed Fusion 10.1.2, meant to keep running a Windows 10 64bit guest over a network drive (hosted on a D-link 320, raid 1) (Performance is not the purpose of that VM).

With the above setup, uptime cannot go longer than a day and few hours before get a random core dump by the Mac.

Tried to pinpoint the reason, done several tests, and to make things short, I did noticed the system goes stable and got no more dumps after I moved the VM to the internal SSD of the Mac. From that time onward did not witnessed the Mac reboot itself again.

I'd like, anyway, move the VM back to the external share, so it will be nice pinpoint why I get that behaviour and being able to fix it.

Can someone tell me the correct procedure to get all necessary info to investigate the problem? (which logs to copy, etc)

TIA, Andrea

[ColoradoMarmot]

This is one of those 'don't do it' things. 

Running a VM over a network is absolutely not recommended.  It's not just performance - any network glitch at all will corrupt the VM, often into an unrecoverable state.  Use an external hard drive instead.

[arimicci]

I have to add, using the same configuration with workstation pro on a windows 10 machine, didn't had any issue for months.

Same share, same disks, same NAS.

Issue started with moving the Host to a Mac fusion product.

The NAS can also handle NFS but afaik I can use it only on esxi products.

Anyway, the issue is not with the guest machine. I accept the risk of using it over a network. The issue is with the Host faulting and rebooting. The host. If any network error, I expect the host warning me of a failed read/write operation, but not reboot itself out the blue.

Hope I added more info about the issue.

[arimicci]

Got a fault even with the VM on local disk.

Fusion was installed over a previous installation (updating version) that comes from a time machine restore (I purchased a new mac mini and then restored the time machine of dismissed device  on the new device).

I now did fully unstalled Fusion (following this procedure)and done a "clean install" to rule out  any wrong settings from previous installation.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Ahh, yeah, time machine is unreliable for full restores.  Between silent corruption and missing files, there's often challenges.  Using the migration wizard is more reliable, but at that point, it's best just to migrate directly from one machine to another.

[arimicci]

After a clean (re)install, the VM didn't had any issue so far.

Yep, I now had take note about the troubles that may arise between full Time Machine restores and some software!