[CentOS] CentOS 5.8 crash/freeze running VMware

Fri Jun 29 01:33:15 UTC 2012
Ted Miller <tedlists at sbcglobal.net>

On 06/28/2012 12:45 PM, Michael Eager wrote:
> 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?
>
Are you staggering the startups of the VMs?  The server may be choking 
trying to boot 8 machines at once.  I suggest starting a VM every 30-60 
seconds, so that you aren't trying to boot all 8 at once.  Don't know if it 
will help, but it might.