[CentOS] Severe VMware slowdown

Thu Nov 29 00:53:54 UTC 2007
Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson at esri.com>

On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 04:47:57PM -0800, Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
> In the last few days, I have noticed a drastic slowdown in my VMware
> Windows guest OS..  I recently bit the bullet and upgraded it from XP
> SP1 to SP2, and that seemed to work fine for quite a few days.
> 
> The two major changes I made to the system recently were:
> 
> 1) The most recent update from CentOS (can't remember which one, but
> it was within the last two weekd for 5.0).
> 
> 2) Adding another VM guest OS, this one a CentOS 5.0 guest.
> 
> What happens is, usually when I click the mouse in the Windows window,
> the system hangs up completely for some period of time that usually
> exceeds four minutes.  Thereafter, once the VM is "running," it will
> occasionally just stop when I am transitioning into the VM from
> elsewhere.
> 
> I verified this using the CentOS system clock - last night it stopped
> at 23:01 and still read 23:01 when my cell phone, which is usually
> dead on in sync with the system clock, read 11:04pm.
> 
> I cut back on the amount of memory allowed to the Windows VM (768MB,
> down from 1GB) and that seemed to help a little, but I have 2GB and
> I'm thinking that this should not be a problem.
> 
> Any input would be helpful.
> 
> Thanks.

Hmm, could be the memory thing -- as the result of the second guest.
How much memory is allocated to it?

When the slowdown occurs, can you check vmstat / iostat on the host and
see if the system is swapping?  Watch free as well.

Ray