Virtualbox 6 on dual E5-Xeon 8 cores each - poor performance

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
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Frank Kodis
Posts: 1
Joined: 15. Oct 2021, 23:01

Virtualbox 6 on dual E5-Xeon 8 cores each - poor performance

Post by Frank Kodis »

HI.

I use VB on and off for years. I started form first version out of curiosity and it evolved into a tool that is actually extremely useful for me to test stuff out. Until now i always used slower single processor "gamer" computers and VB always worked, hm, accordingly but i never expected anything if comes to performance.

Now thou i bought a dual Xeon workstation with huge RAM and i cant find any solution to very poor performance of most guests i install on it. I found some info to not declare more than 2 processors for guest because something... somewhere else i found another piece of advice.. and another. And nothing really works.

I did multitude of tests and nothing really works. No matter of what number of Processors i declare in settings for guest machine it really never works like supposed to.

So, where is can find a exact info or piece of documentation about correct configuration that my guest machine would run with for example 6 cores and utilize as much power from host machine as needed? I dont mind to give VB all power available except whats needed for OS (Windows 10 x64) - using VB i never do anything power hungry or run such processes.

Thanks :)
Frank
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: Virtualbox 6 on dual E5-Xeon 8 cores each - poor performance

Post by scottgus1 »

Let's look at a poorly-performing VM.

Start the VM from full normal shutdown, not save-state. Run until you see the problem happen, then shut down the VM from within the VM's OS if possible. If not possible, close the Virtualbox window for the VM with the Power Off option set.

Right-click the VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show Log. Save the far left tab's log and the hardening log next to it, zip them, and post the zip file, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab.
frg
Posts: 88
Joined: 29. Sep 2013, 12:22

Re: Virtualbox 6 on dual E5-Xeon 8 cores each - poor performance

Post by frg »

I am quite happy with 2 E5-2667v3 and 128GB. About 30% faster than the previous e5-2667v2 setup I used.

Disable hyperthreading. It did slow down things for me when doing compiles or other cpu intensive tasks.

Not knowing which hardware:
Make sure NUMA is activated in the BIOS
Make sure you never add more physical cores than one processor has. Doing otherwise will usually hang the vm during start.
vt-x and vt-d should be on too.

FRG
z hopa
Posts: 17
Joined: 8. Dec 2013, 17:29

Re: Virtualbox 6 on dual E5-Xeon 8 cores each - poor performance

Post by z hopa »

Figures, VB does not step the frequency scaling up quickly or aggressively enough.
I can see that on Xeon the core frequencies mostly stay at the lowest 1200, while the guest OS in the VB pins 2x+ out of however many cores are allocated to the VM.
On a desktop AMD APU the frequency jumps as soon as the guest core is pinned.
The guest OS on the Xeon is struggling, but the host is not ramping up. This is the recipe for slowness.
In the BIOS, the power scheme is Balanced Performance. Any app on the host that pins CPU immediately throws the frequency to 2900. VB should as well.
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Virtualbox 6 on dual E5-Xeon 8 cores each - poor performance

Post by mpack »

z hopa wrote:Figures, VB does not step the frequency scaling up quickly or aggressively enough.
What frequency scaling? VirtualBox is an application running on your host OS. It is not the host OS.

I can see that this topic title "poor performance" invites "me too" type posts. Locking it.
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