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  • #21
    Originally posted by allquixotic View Post
    Our configuration is very dissimilar. Except: how many cores are you assigning to the guest?

    I'm gonna try something later on, and start with 1 core, test, and increment the cores to 2, then 4 then 8 and see if the behavior changes. It may have something to do with the virtual IOAPIC, which is required if you have greater than one core.
    I assign just one, but I also tried two, three and four. It makes no difference.

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    • #22
      Confirming the issue. Guest performance suffers when the host is doing disk IO. This is most noticable in the form of audio stuttering. On a windows7 host (workstation 8.02), all of my guests have the same issue. Guest OS's range from windows 98 through windows 7, Redhat 7.3 through Fedora 16, and OSX 10.5 through OSX 10.7.3. The issue is worse when IO is occurring on a disk that is connected to my Jmicron controller than it is on my intel controller. Updating the host Jmicron driver does not resolve the issue.

      I generally use guests for non-audio-related automated/scripted software testing, and as sandboxes. The issue doesn't cost me any productivity.

      Bench system is an old i5 750 on an Asus P7P55 Deluxe.

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      • #23
        Originally posted by russofris View Post
        Confirming the issue. Guest performance suffers when the host is doing disk IO. This is most noticable in the form of audio stuttering. On a windows7 host (workstation 8.02), all of my guests have the same issue. Guest OS's range from windows 98 through windows 7, Redhat 7.3 through Fedora 16, and OSX 10.5 through OSX 10.7.3. The issue is worse when IO is occurring on a disk that is connected to my Jmicron controller than it is on my intel controller. Updating the host Jmicron driver does not resolve the issue.

        I generally use guests for non-audio-related automated/scripted software testing, and as sandboxes. The issue doesn't cost me any productivity.

        Bench system is an old i5 750 on an Asus P7P55 Deluxe.
        Hi,

        Do you have a support entitlement with VMware? Mine expired. If you have an entitlement, please submit a ticket. They WILL get back to you -- they're very good about that.

        I will buy the $49.00 single-incident support and submit a ticket if you don't have a support entitlement. This needs to get fixed.

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        • #24
          To anyone following this thread for the VMware guest lag problem, take a look at this thread on VMware Communities: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/394250 (the threads are now cross-linked so hopefully we can combine brain power with people who've been using Workstation for years, and VMware employees too).

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          • #25
            Do you have a support entitlement with VMware?
            Yes and no. I was entitled to VMWare support up until the moment I unlocked the OSX guests. In order to file a support ticket, I would have to reinstall VMware, and I honestly do not have the initiative to undertake something that may results in tonight's batch failing.

            Side Note: The app I am working on is a context-sensitive aspect-ratio convertor. 4:3 video is converted to 16:9 using every trick in I can find, including the context gained from panning/zooming. The current issue is figuring out which techniques to use (in combination), and when, and what can be done in real time. The neat thing is that the same techniques can be used in reverse (16:9 -> 4:3) to fill in the top and bottom bars.

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            • #26
              Hey, a fourth person on the VMware forums confirmed he is experiencing similar symptoms: http://communities.vmware.com/message/2005634#2005634

              This isn't just us imagining it, folks. We need to make sure VMware knows about this and is taking steps to rectify it.

              Thanks everyone for participating. I feel like we are making progress on the issue. It's up to VMware to fix it, but if they don't know about it, it'll never get fixed.

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              • #27
                Are you guys sure it's just the vm freezing? From my experience with Intel hardware the entire machine will freeze while doing intense I/O even without running any virtualization software. The most obvious case is while unpacking a large archive in the background, like the linux kernel. Usually the audio does not skip, but all GUI applications become unresponsive until unpacking finishes. I'm getting this with a Core 2 Quad CPU and I noticed the same with the previous Core 2 Duo machine the company I work for provided.

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by Ansla View Post
                  Are you guys sure it's just the vm freezing? From my experience with Intel hardware the entire machine will freeze while doing intense I/O even without running any virtualization software. The most obvious case is while unpacking a large archive in the background, like the linux kernel. Usually the audio does not skip, but all GUI applications become unresponsive until unpacking finishes. I'm getting this with a Core 2 Quad CPU and I noticed the same with the previous Core 2 Duo machine the company I work for provided.
                  I don't see something like that. And I don't need intense I/O to see the problem in VMware either. All I need to do is enter "sync" in a terminal and the VM freezes. And it does it *every* time, even if "sync" completes in 0.2 seconds or such.

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by Ansla View Post
                    Are you guys sure it's just the vm freezing? From my experience with Intel hardware the entire machine will freeze while doing intense I/O even without running any virtualization software.
                    While I cannot directly answer the question, I can state that the symptoms (audio stuttering, performance degradation under moderate IO) do not exist on the host. We've all tried a number of quick fixes to resolve the issue, including driver updates, bios changes (enable/disable VT-d), etc. The only clue that I can give is that high pci-latency exacerbates the issue (IO on the JMicron controller produces more audio stuttering than the onboard ICH9).

                    Reproduction is simple. Open a VM, open youtube, play a video that contains audio, kick off a file transfer on the host, Liss..ss...ss..ten to the audio.o..o.(pop).o.

                    F

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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by russofris View Post
                      While I cannot directly answer the question, I can state that the symptoms (audio stuttering, performance degradation under moderate IO) do not exist on the host. We've all tried a number of quick fixes to resolve the issue, including driver updates, bios changes (enable/disable VT-d), etc. The only clue that I can give is that high pci-latency exacerbates the issue (IO on the JMicron controller produces more audio stuttering than the onboard ICH9).

                      Reproduction is simple. Open a VM, open youtube, play a video that contains audio, kick off a file transfer on the host, Liss..ss...ss..ten to the audio.o..o.(pop).o.

                      F
                      You hit the nail on the head. Nice description of the problem and test steps.

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