my GSX host runs 4 VMs. 3 linux ubuntu 5.10, 1 windows XP. now the weirdest thing happens. eventhough the VMs are running idle (0.00 load), the vmware-vmx monitors use 10 to 15% cpu! point is that they're all running slow while neither of them is doing anything. i have a few things that might have something to do with it but am unable to easily test them.
\- i use growable monolithic files. but in idletime i dont suspect that to cause 15% cpu overhead??
\- the vmdks are on a ATA100 ide disk, but that too shouldn't cause these big delays
i have no idea where this is coming from.
here's my setup:
3Ghz P4, 1GB RAM, Ubuntu 5.10 host (kernel 2.6.12-10)
VMs all run vmware-tools
VMs are as idle as can be (see 'top' dump below)
any help would be greatly appreciated. i think this setup should be able to work much better than is does!
here's a snap from my 'top':
top - 23:26:04 up 1 day, 3:14, 1 user, load average: 3.21, 3.13, 2.70
Tasks: 73 total, 2 running, 71 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 5.7% us, 82.7% sy, 0.0% ni, 0.0% id, 11.7% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 1028344k total, 1008504k used, 19840k free, 3668k buffers
Swap: 498004k total, 0k used, 498004k free, 715452k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
15564 root 5 -10 268m 38m 28m S 44.6 3.8 77:53.78 vmware-vmx
6713 root 5 -10 291m 40m 30m S 14.6 4.0 192:57.02 vmware-vmx
6819 root 5 -10 123m 19m 12m S 14.3 1.9 258:17.56 vmware-vmx
6570 root 5 -10 291m 43m 33m S 12.6 4.3 186:04.56 vmware-vmx
and a 'top' dump from a VM:
top - 23:32:17 up 1 day, 24 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 44 total, 1 running, 43 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0% us, 1.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 98.7% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.3% si
Mem: 256784k total, 237712k used, 19072k free, 87884k buffers
Swap: 368632k total, 0k used, 368632k free, 112216k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
6467 root 16 0 2132 1056 844 R 0.7 0.4 0:00.10 top
3 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:43.20 events/0
1 root 16 0 1564 528 460 S 0.0 0.2 0:08.25 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0