SMP for Solaris 10 64-bit guest on WinXP x64 host

[rasta]

Is the use of SMP (>1 processor) recommended in this environment:

HOST

WinXP Pro x64
4GB ram (will get 2 GB more)
quad-core Xeon 5120 processor (1.86 GHz)

GUEST

Solaris 10 u8 64-bit
1974-2048 MB RAM assigned
32 MB vram
VT-x/PAE/3D accel enabled

I am having the guest completely crash when >1 processor is assigned to guest. Such crashing never occurred on a XP 32-bit host with the exact same guest and 1500 MB ram assigned. Sometimes I get a "host memory low" non-fatal error, but most often the guest suddenly crashes down to GRUB. I will get 6 GB RAM on the host and try that. The application I run when the crash occurs is a beast requiring up to 3 GB swap and all available ram.

[rasta]

Note: I only used 1 processor on the 32-bit host.

[rasta]

Even with 6 GB ram on the XP 64-bit host, and assigning 2560 MB ram to guest, the guest is completely unstable if >1 processor is used, with hanging and crashes to GRUB. Is anyone successfully using SMP (>1 processor) for Solaris 10 guests on Windows hosts? Please help!

[SSCBrian]

Even with 6 GB ram on the XP 64-bit host, and assigning 2560 MB ram to guest, the guest is completely unstable if >1 processor is used, with hanging and crashes to GRUB. Is anyone successfully using SMP (>1 processor) for Solaris 10 guests on Windows hosts? Please help!

I'm using SMP (2 proc) somewhat successfully with Vista x64 host and Solaris 10U8 guest. Host has 6GB RAM, Guest has 2GB RAM. I say somewhat successfully because it has spontaneously rebooted on me a couple times while trying to use updatemanager. However, other than that it's been fine since the last set of Windows patches (before those latest "patch Tuesday" patches I had all kinds of problems with VBox 3.1.0).

[rasta]

SSC,

Thank you for the info. That is very interesting, for I also experienced spontaneous reboot after using Update Manager, and also while using my memory-intensive application, all with 2 processors. I have much fewer, if any, such problems using only one processor. Have you received any Vbox HostMemoryLow errors (non-fatal)?

I posted a bug:

http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/5755

[SSCBrian]

No Vbox HostMemoryLow errors of any kind. I will note that 64-bit OS guests in VBox consume memory more rapidly than 32-bit. Wondering if there's some extra overhead? When I had 4GB of RAM, I could open three 1GB guests or a 1GB and a 2GB guest. Upgraded to 6GB RAM at the same time that working 64-bit support came to VBox for Solaris. I'm in the same position now, once I have 3GB worth of 64-bit guests open I can't open anymore without killing the machine (heavy swapping and VBox memory errors). Seems odd to add 2GB RAM and not gain anymore VM ability, but that's when I was able to go from 32-bit to 64-bit guests too...