Hi --
I have a server running CentOS 5.8. It has a 6-core AMD processor, 16Gb memory, and a RAID 5 file system. It serves as both a file server and to run several VMware virtual machines. The guest machines run Windows 7 and various versions of Linux.
The system is running the latest version of VMware Workstation. Until recently, I started VMs using the VMware Workstation GUI. The system has been very stable and seldom crashes.
Recently, I set up an init script to start several VMs at boot time using the vmrun command. This appeared to work correctly, but the system has become unstable, freezing at various times. When the system freezes, there is no console response and it does not respond to a ping. There is nothing in syslog to indicate any error.
The script started 8 VMs. I've cut back to now running 4 VMs and the system appears stable.
Is there some relation between the number of cores and the number of VMs one can run?
Is there something else which might cause the system to crash when running multiple VMs?
Any suggestions to identify why the system crashed?