Performance issues, Workstation 9 on Linux host

[DABaron]

Problem

I went from using Virtualbox and Windows 7 to VMware workstation and Windows8 on my Ubuntu-linux workstation at my office. But since the swap the performance has ben everything but good in my guest. I've tried numorous settings for CPU/RAM etc but without enhancement.

I mainly run office, and management applications for Hyper-V, ESX, Windows Servers, and Cisco-routers on the Windows 8 VM. So no heavy duties at all.

But performance and response times are bad, especially after working with it for a day or two. Like text coming 2 sec after typing a word in a mail, or starting ASDM-manager for a cisco-router takes 30 sec instead of normal 5-10 sec.

Running Windows 8 64-bit on parallels on my MacBook pro with flaweless performance and Windows 7 on VirtualBox on the same host now running VMWare workstation with good performance. I expect more from a product like VMWare workstation, but I cannot figure out whats the problem.

My host is working flawlessly other from inside the guest, and as written above, performance was good with virtualbox/Win7 on same host and setup

What is the recomended settings for CPU etc for my setup and hardware?

Anyone with the same issue on a linux-host?

I've not yet tried to install another guest with Win 7 to compare performance.

Host

CPU: Core i7 (Quad) 930 (8 logical CPUs) @ 2.80 GHz

RAM: 12GB DDR3 1600mhz

HDD: 128GB SSD (intel, not a cheap one)

GPU: Radeon HD 6800 for three monitors.

OS: Ubuntu 12.04 64-Bit (Kernel 3.2.0-37-generic)... Fully patched

Virtualization: VMWare Workstation 9 for linux and Windows, Fully patched

Guest

OS: Windows 8 Pro 64-bit, fully patched

CPU: 2 CPU & 2 Cores (running this atm, tried everything from 1-4 cores and 1-4 CPUs

RAM: 4 GB

HDD: 60Gb (dynamicly assigned)

Monitors: Two

Accelerate 3D: Enabled

Virtualization Engine: Automatic

[ak_hepcat]

I'm in the same camp as DABaron, and it's extremely frustrating.

HOST:

8-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU  E5530  @ 2.40GHz

12 GB Ram

300GB SATA-3 drive

AMD/ATI RV620 [FirePro 2260]  dual-head, radeon drivere

OS: kubuntu 12.10, fully patched

VMWS 9.0.1 build-894247

Linux kernel (tested: 3.2.0-37-generic, 3.5.0-24-generic, 3.7.7-030707-generic, 3.8.0-030800-generic )

Guest:

WinXP SP3

3GB ram, dedicated

vmtools

80G sata drive (RAW DRIVE)

All kernels tested exhibit the same lagginess.

Additionally, VMWS drains the buffer cache at an extremely rapid pace. taking the system from 7GB free to 0GB free in under 30m.

I'm seriously considering backing out my purchased and very lousy performing install of VMWS9  for the completely useable VMWS7 (with 3rd-party patches for newer kernels, obviously)

It's insane, I don't know how this build escaped QA.

[ak_hepcat]

...and after coming into the office and trying to use VMware9 while my load climbed from 0.49  to 7.83 (with a nearly unresponsive host side) over the course of 2 minutes (i started outlook.  That's it.  And it wasn't syncing, it was idle)   i said  'screw it'

I've now backreved to 7.1.6, and with vmware716fixlinux340.tar.bz2  in hand, I patched up my system (yep, works great in kernel 3.8.0)

My load climbed to 2.1 for about 10 minutes after starting vmw7, but my host side was never unresponsive at any time, even while removing and installing vmware-tools  on the VM.

after an hour, my system load is back down to .32, and while my free memory is being used for cache, it's not causing any swappiness, as it's reclaiming correctly.

VMWS9 was a waste of my money.

[rhking]

Same thing for me with Workstation 10 upgrade. Went to WS10 from 7.1.6 when upgrading my Linux host from Ubuntu 104 LTS since WS 7 was no longer supported per VMWare.

With a Conky meter on my desktop, I can see Swap going from practically nothing (in the 270MB range) to around 2GB when I switch between idle VMs, and system becomes unresponsive (host and guests) for 2-3 minutes at a time.

Memory usage when I load 1 VM goes to around 1GB with 200MB swap used, and performance is fine. Opening a 2nd VM kills things.

I hear that there may be some issue with Win7 more aggressively banging the disk, causing more paging, but my host has 8GB of RAM with at least 6.5GB free at any time during these tests.

[Dayworker]

How much vRAM have you granted to your VMs?

It is known to me, that depended of the workstation version, in dependence of the size of the vRAM, only a small part of the vRAM will be held in the pRAM (host memory) and the bigger part will be marked as swappable by the used VMware desktop product. This bigger part will be transferred to the swap (linux) or the virtual memory (windows) of the host.

Check yourself with a VM and start with only 512MB of vRAM. Login to your guest and then take a look inside the task-manager or top of the host and compare the values for the vRAM with a running process named "vmware-vmx" (the guest os). Until a given point of vRAM the display of vRAM and pRAM of the vmware-process are at least equal or pRAM consumption is bigger than the configured vRAM (plus pci-adress-area, graphics-memory inside the guest etc). If you are behind this border (depends of the used VMware version somewhere between 512MB and 1500MB of vRAM), this will change and the vmware-process consumes only 400-500MB of pRAM.