XP performance: VM vs native

[khoyt]

Hi,

I'm hoping there is a way to improve the speed of XP while running in a VM.

I've got Mac OS X 10.5.7, VMware 2.05, and XP set up on a Boot Camp partition.

My performance 'test' is to compile code...

While running in VM the compile time is 3+ hours.

While running native, it's less than 1.

I would expect some degradation just because, but 3:1 seems a bit much.

Windows Task Manager shows the CPUs are not at 100%.

There is still 495000 Physical Memory available

Activity Monitor shows:

CPUs are 80-90% used

vmware-vmx is at 120%

System memory is at 3.4Gb with 600MB free

Disk Read 3.23 GB

Disk Write 4.86 GB

I have the following set up for the VM:

Sharing on

2 CPUs

1 GB RAM

3D on

My Macbook Pro:

2.4GHz Core 2 Duo

4GB RAM

7200 RPM harddrive

Any suggestions, other than reboot to run native

[majortom]

I can only think that the problem is in the 2nd level cache performance: poor in VMware. I can't imagine anything else that can explain such a difference in performance.

Have you tried with other virtualizers such as Parallels (you should be able to have it with a 30 days free trial period) or VirtualBox?

Simon

[admin]

I agree that disk performance is the most likely culprit, though since you're compiling, RAM allocation may be a problem as well.

Boot camp disk performance is typically worse than a preallocated virtual disk, so if you could try creating a new virtual machine, you should see better results. Also, try toggling the "Optimize for virtual disk/Mac OS application performance" setting in Fusion's Preferences (you'll have to shut down and start up the virtual machine for this to have an effect).

[bgertzfield]

Hi,

I'm hoping there is a way to improve the speed of XP while running in a VM.

I've got Mac OS X 10.5.7, VMware 2.05, and XP set up on a Boot Camp partition.

I think running off a Boot Camp partition is part of the problem. Mac OS X offers very poor I/O performance when reading/writing to raw partitions -- the same problem applies to MacFUSE with the NTFS-3g driver:

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/wiki/FAQ#ntfs-3g

I would recommend making another disk for this virtual machine that's stored locally on your Mac, or using a newly created VM.

[khoyt]

So are you suggesting that if I add a second virtual disk to my existing Boot Camp VM, it will have faster access to the VM disk than the Boot Camp disk? If so, that would be interesting... I'll give it a try.

As for MacFUSE, I did not install it, but I assume Fusion uses it to access NTFS under the covers.

What about accessing the Mac HFS+ disk via the share? That seems to be just as 'fast' as FTPing them from some other system. So I'm guessing note.

[admin · Accepted solution]

As for MacFUSE, I did not install it, but I assume Fusion uses it to access NTFS under the covers.

MacFUSE comes with Fusion and is installed by default, but it is only so that OS X can mount our virtual disks like .dmgs. It is not used for accessing the Boot Camp partition - we do that on a block level, not a file level, so we don't care about the filesystem.

[khoyt]

Alright!!

So, adding a new VM disk to my Boot Camp XP system shows a huge improvement.

Compile time with the source on the VM disk is 1:20 minutes. Not much more than running XP native.

I can live with that!

Thank you for the suggestion.

[bgertzfield]

So are you suggesting that if I add a second virtual disk to my existing Boot Camp VM, it will have faster access to the VM disk than the Boot Camp disk? If so, that would be interesting... I'll give it a try.

Right!

As for MacFUSE, I did not install it, but I assume Fusion uses it to access NTFS under the covers.

Sorry, I was totally unclear.

MacFUSE and VMware Fusion running a VM off a Boot Camp both rely on Mac OS X's raw disk access feature. They're both quite slow by default, because Mac OS is very slow at accessing raw disk devices.

I'm glad making a new VM disk and adding it to the VM helped your speed problems!

[WoodyZ]

Alright!! So, adding a new VM disk to my Boot Camp XP system shows a huge improvement.

Compile time with the source on the VM disk is 1:20 minutes. Not much more than running XP native.

I can live with that!

Thank you for the suggestion.

A word of caution is in order here...

One of the default suggested fixes for Boot Camp partition issues is to delete the Boot Camp partition Virtual Machine since by default it is only meta-data and is easily regenerated however if you've added a second Virtual Hard Drive to the Boot Camp partition Virtual Machine I'd strongly suggest and recommend that it be stored outside of the Boot Camp partition Virtual Machine's Package so as to avoid accidental deletion otherwise you may forget you have the 2nd virtual disk if you ever have to delete the Boot Camp partition Virtual Machine to resolve an issue that requires that action and in turn loose whatever user data that exists on the 2nd disk.

You can move the 2nd disk to a safer location and then edit the Boot Camp partition.vmx file to have the correct path.