virtualbox.org

Hi

We used to run VB very well since a very long time ago on Xeon servers (Skylake).
Everybody was happy with windows 7, 10 (1607) and some xp, our main operating systems for university(s) and school(s). However since 2015 servers players has suffered a big change and in 2022 the board decided to update,our/the entire compute power. So we asked and received sample(s) from important cpu manufacturers.

We did our tests, internal and concluded that the most up to date is (sample) AMD Genoa 5np with 96/192 cores/threads.
However almost everything based on Visual Studio 2019 and below, Qt 5, .Net 5 for example is performing bad like real bad on our test sample, of course we double checked and our lead team manager had the idea to update some projects to Visual Studio 2022...... and bam the performance was like pressing the acceleration pedal of an Tesla electric car. Shocking and electrifying in the same time.
So we did try some other tools based on Qt 6.2 and again the performance was skyrocketing, and again the same thing with .Net 6.0.2.
Not everyday we see our lead team manager drop spills from his mug of black tea once he/we saw the performances..

But our biggest disappointment was with VirtualBox v6.1.32.xxxx, based on Qt 5.6.2 the performance was outstanding on Xeon skylake servers good for Windows 7,10 for students lite projects and windows xp with the older version of VirtualBox. Everybody was happy with acceptable performance. However with our brand new Genoa sample, the VirtualBox once very useful turned into a living nightmare.
Crashes, random freezes, corrupted & lost data, slow the performance of VB was just miserable.
We tried every settings, on multiple os, Windows & Linux, nothing worked out.
Unfortunate we can't provide the logs, since that will void our agreement with AMD and we think Oracle understands that !

We currently doing overtime of 12 hours shift per team to pass all the drives data's based on VirtualBox images to another virtualization software that offers beyond wddm 1.0 of VirtualBox and support for our AMD Genoa sample.
Our server room is now so lite since we replaced 18 Xeon servers, imagine that 18 Xeon servers, the power draw wattage, the heat.....with 1 AMD Genoa.
We currently placed some more orders for Genoa but sadly we have to wait a long, long very long time.....I might get to pension waiting !

We need virtualization, we can now use 40 virtual machines, yes 40 virtual machines each one with 4 cores and 8 gb ddr5 5200mhz and with 1 tb drive per student combined with well Windows 11 (some don't like it) but Windows 10 is not an option since AMD strongly recommended to wait for at least Windows 11 22H2 Sun Valley, due strong optimizations. AMD even give us a special KB but VirtualBox is underperforming so bad, soo bad.

We already have a list with banned software not to use anymore and VitualBox is one of them.
Still we can't believe that till now Oracle did not have a sample product of AMD Genoa.
Oracle has not ordered AMD Genoa till now ?!

Well it has been a wonderful years with VirtualBox but we all think was time to label VirtualBox as legacy software and move over it, for good !

Strong advice for the companies who received AMD Genoa Samples is to avoid VirtualBox and anything based on Visual Studio 2019 and bellow, Qt 5.xx, .Net 5.xx !

Talk to your Oracle rep about your dissatisfaction with your Virtualbox support contract. This forum is not the place for discussing paid support issues.

Oh, wait, you didn't pay for support? Oh, so you're a beta tester, just like all us other free Virtualbox users.

New processors sometimes have new bugs or incompatibilities that the devs need to know about. It has happened before, and when free Virtualbox users are willing to report with logs of the troublesome issues, the devs can get and have got the incompatibilities fixed.

So if you want to help, we can help. If you want to rant and use up this server for your rants, that won't happen.

Strong advice for the companies who received AMD Genoa Samples is to avoid VirtualBox and anything based on Visual Studio 2019 and bellow, Qt 5.xx, .Net 5.xx !

Many Thanks.
We had the same problems with our dual socket test samples.
Fixed and running at fantastic performances.

mi6 any news about 4np genoa?
amd offical told us that it's going to be mixed 5np and 4np cores, probably 4np for the 128c. we got as you described too the 5np.

Suggestion to switch on hyper-v if on windows, or as you been told to wait at least for sun valley 2.
Did amd told your team that microsoft is sweating hard in making adjustments to it's os for genoa, and that the linux might be the best solution!
If ceo Lisa Su is going to make the announcement on taitra about AMD Zen OS, then in late q4-22 or q1-23 we can be on amd's Zen OS.
Then, microsoft won't matter anymore!
Still we are short over 40 sockets, nonetheless is the time waiting for the amd to deliver the goodies, we can't go back to intel like never again after tasting genoa. So we have to wait for genoa sake we will wait.
Very exciting times to be an engineer!

As it seems that Virtualbox might have a glitch over these Genoa processors (it's happened before with new processors), it would help the devs if you made a Bugtracker ticket, with VM logs and evidence of the slowdowns you see.

One other possibility to try:

Forum user 'mr_spock' did some testing on a fancier host computer and was able to remove slower Virtualbox performance by disabling host melt-down/spectre mitigation, see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=106024&p=518007#p518007