virtualbox.org

Hi everybody,

This is the first time posting for me, so i may be being stupid so i apologize in advance.

I am currently running a HP ProLiant DL380 G5 server with duel xeon e5440 @2.83GHz 24Gbram with a headless ubuntu server install and virtualboxPHP.
I have 2 windows 10 guests both with 6Gb ram and one with 4 cores and the other with 2 running simultaneously.

the problem i am facing is that they are really slow and if i do anything the cpu usage hits 100% , the 4 core vm is running SCADA software and the 2 core is running cctv software.

Before i set up the server, the scada software had been running well on a "real" machine with 4Gb ram and intel baytrail N2807 gigabyte brix on windows 7, i would of thought this server would be able to manage with ease but it really struggles.

Would anyone be able to give me any advice?

I have attached my log files

Regards

Chris

For future reference, we don't need to see four copies of the log, 1 should be enough, and use less volunteer time. For now I'll simply ignore the unnecessary logs.

How old are these VMs? Win10 is often slow when first installed.

And does the 4-core one in particular actually require 4 cores? I'd be surprised if the applications you mention actually use them, in which case the extra cores are just overhead. I'd give each VM two cores max.

And do I gather than you're running both VMs at the same time? So they're sharing I/O bandwidth?

Btw, it's a good idea to eject the GAs ISO once the additions are installed.

What can a SCADA or CCTV app actually do in a VM? Generally speaking you don't put hardware control applications in a VM.

Have you looked at the guest and host tasklists to see what is using all the CPU and I/O?

Thank you for your reply mpack,

Sorry for the multiple copies, i just copied the contents of the log folder i didn't realize they were all the same, in future ill check.

these VMs are about a week old, do you think they may speed up with more time or would i be better with windows7?

i have removed the GA disk and reduced it to two cores and it does actually seem a bit quicker not as quick is id like but acceptable now. Thankyou,

I quite often use VM's for Scada systems because it is an easy way to keep them backed up in case of machine failure, normally when they are installed on older OS's though, the cctv system was just an after thought though and i may migrate it to a real machine if that will improve the scada m/c.

CPU seems to sit at 75ish % with my scada software at about 25%, desktop windows manager 20%, windows explorer 15%, system 10%, and a few low draining processes.#

the ram, disk and network load never really goes above 20%

eddolls wrote: these VMs are about a week old, do you think they may speed up with more time or would i be better with windows7?

That depends on how long they've actually been running. I'd have thought that a week was long enough.

eddolls wrote: CPU seems to sit at 75ish % with my scada software at about 25%, desktop windows manager 20%, windows explorer 15%, system 10%, and a few low draining processes.#

Well, none of those are VirtualBox processes - and I can't think why the window manager, windows explorer and "system" should be using 45% of CPU between them. My guess is that your SCADA application never actually yields, that it's calling some OS function(s) continuously.

What kind of I/O does the SCADA system do? Since you're running in a VM (which has very little access to the physical world), I'd guess is that it might be continuously polling the serial port which considering that it's emulated, would certainly create an overhead.

Yes they have been running for a week now, so should be ok

The SCADA system communicates via Ethernet to 8 PLC's but not to any serial ports, i will have to look through it and see if i can slim it down a bit, thank you for your help, it is really good to be able to talk to someone rather than just myself.

eddolls wrote: The SCADA system communicates via Ethernet to 8 PLC's

Polled or event driven?

Network applications can and do work well and with with low overhead in a VirtualBox VM. However if you are polling then, just as in the serial port case, this will create an overhead. The VM has the work of hardware emulation to do, over and above the work that a physical PC would have to do. Something that continually hammers the virtual hardware is practically a worst case scenario for a VM.