vmware client slow

David Timms dtimms at iinet.net.au
Fri Jul 27 10:22:11 UTC 2007


roland wrote:
>> On Thu, 26 Jul 2007, roland wrote:
>>
>>> Hello everybody
>>> I installed Centos 4.2, then vmware server and then a client fed6 and 
>>> Microsoftserver2003.
 > When I try free and top this shows
 > information as if the whole memory is used.
the host os will use all available RAM as file caches for the virtual 
disks areas read by the guest.

+ you need to have ample RAM eg:
fed6 500M vm
ms2k3 500M vm
host os with gui 400MB
=> > 1.4GB will good minimum, the rest will get used as cache.

file access will get cached into the underlying host ram, and into the 
guests ram, and eventually filling memory on a large copy.

+ timing intervals:
vmware docs mention two issues in keeping time and providing enough 
virtual interrupts for each machine:
Timing is improved if the host has a kernel tick of 1000Hz, while the 
guests should have a slower tick of 100Hz.

+ run the vmware tools in the guests.

+ disable unneeded services.

+ I think it might help to make the guest os's virtual disks as small as 
is reasonable, and to limit the swap file size to what is reasonable.

I run two fc6 guests on fc6 host without any trouble with this setup. I 
sometimes also start a w2k3 server guest without noticable performance 
difference on the other guests. {about the same resources you mention}.

DaveT.




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