VM constantly running at 100% CPU

[kr0490]

I have 2 VMs running on a PC with a kabby lake i7 and 16GB of ram. The 1st is running CentOS for my home freePBX. The second is running windows 10 64 bit. The windows VM is always running at 100% CPU utilization, and sometimes the disk also shows 100% cpu, but not always. The host does not have CPU maxed out. I cannot figure out what is causing this. I have reinstalled the VM from scratch several times with the same results. Any ideas?

 

[why_wolf]

are you sure you set the VM to at least the minimum requirements for W10? Also is W10 updated all the way?

 

[kr0490]

Yes to both. Here is the config for the CPU and mem i have set on it https://ibb.co/j6PqQQ

 

[kr0490]

Let me know if any additional info is needed. This is driving me crazy and i can't figure it out!

 

[why_wolf]

Have you tried spinning up a fresh VM W10? I'm wondering if its something with just this particular VM. You can also try throwing more resources at it just to see if it behaves better with them or not.

I have a VM of W10 myself. I never have any real problem with it, but I don't use it extensively. Though I do recall it runs, but slowly, with just the two core minimum.

 

[kr0490]

Have you tried spinning up a fresh VM W10? I'm wondering if its something with just this particular VM. You can also try throwing more resources at it just to see if it behaves better with them or not.

I have a VM of W10 myself. I never have any real problem with it, but I don't use it extensively. Though I do recall it runs, but slowly, with just the two core minimum.

I have erased and recreated the vm multiple times with the same result, even thrown extra memory at it and no change 🙁

 

[why_wolf]

what about more cores? For me it was a noticeable difference between it running on 2 cores and 4 cores.

 

[kr0490]

what about more cores? For me it was a noticeable difference between it running on 2 cores and 4 cores.

The photo I uploaded shows cup config, should be fine

 

[why_wolf]

from the photo its look like you have only 1 core assigned to the VM, which is below the minimum. Unless I'm reading that page wrong, I've never used ESXi.

Also looks like Hyper threading is turned off?

 

[kr0490]

I made adjustments, please see this photo. No change in performance. http://imgur.com/a/wudHO

 

[why_wolf]

when you check the CPU usage is the W10 VM actually using all the MHz it should have available to it? I'm seeing some google results of people saying they see 100% guest CPU usuage but only 20% Host CPU usage and the guest seems to max out on only a fraction of the total MHz speed it should have available to it.

 

[kr0490]

when you check the CPU usage is the W10 VM actually using all the MHz it should have available to it? I'm seeing some google results of people saying they see 100% guest CPU usuage but only 20% Host CPU usage and the guest seems to max out on only a fraction of the total MHz speed it should have available to it.

The host isn't anywhere near maxing out, even though the vm is.

 

[why_wolf]

Hrm so I wouldn't be surprised if the vm is maxing out at some artificially low MHz then. Which would explain the poor performance and 100% CPU usage even though the Host itself says their is plenty of power available.

I'm not really sure though. Frankly the threads I find aren't orbiting a singular cause so the answers aren't all the same, or even really answers.

I think this thread is kind of interesting as it talks alot about how the cores of a CPU should be setup and assigned in the host. Since your problem presents itself even in fresh W10 VMs I can't imagine its W10 causing the problem. So maybe a misconfiguration on the Host side is the source. https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1231195

What happens if you spin up a VM of say Ubuntu? Does it run poorly too?

 

[kr0490]

Hrm so I wouldn't be surprised if the vm is maxing out at some artificially low MHz then. Which would explain the poor performance and 100% CPU usage even though the Host itself says their is plenty of power available.

I'm not really sure though. Frankly the threads I find aren't orbiting a singular cause so the answers aren't all the same, or even really answers.

I think this thread is kind of interesting as it talks alot about how the cores of a CPU should be setup and assigned in the host. Since your problem presents itself even in fresh W10 VMs I can't imagine its W10 causing the problem. So maybe a misconfiguration on the Host side is the source. https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1231195

What happens if you spin up a VM of say Ubuntu? Does it run poorly too?

I have freepbx running on centos on the host and it runs fine. Since I frequently see the disk maxing out too, I'm spinning up a new Windows vm on another disk to see if maybe there is a problem with the hdd

 

[TerryLaze]

when you check the CPU usage is the W10 VM actually using all the MHz it should have available to it? I'm seeing some google results of people saying they see 100% guest CPU usuage but only 20% Host CPU usage and the guest seems to max out on only a fraction of the total MHz speed it should have available to it.

The host isn't anywhere near maxing out, even though the vm is.

If the VM uses one core to 100% that's only 12.5% of the i7...but the one core of the i7 is still maxed out!

Also does centOS have CPU speed scaling? I know from dos for example that it always runs the core at 100% even if nothing at all is running.
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Power_Management_Guide/cpufreq_governors.html

 

[kr0490]

My centos vm is restricted to only 1ghz. Are my settings correct for the windows vm to use all 4 cores?

 

[kr0490]

I tried the installation on a new disk and have the same issue. Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[why_wolf]

you mentioned you have the centOS restricted to just 1GHz. Any chance that setting is getting applied over to the W10 VM?

2nd question is centOS VM always running while trying to get the W10 VM to work right?

 

[kr0490]

you mentioned you have the centOS restricted to just 1GHz. Any chance that setting is getting applied over to the W10 VM?

2nd question is centOS VM always running while trying to get the W10 VM to work right?

I checked inside the windows vm and the os is showing 3.4ghz, and yes centos is always running

 

[why_wolf]

well last thing I can really think of is turn off centOS VM and try running the W10 VM all by its lonesome.

 

[kr0490]

Ugh this is so frustrating. I stopped centos to no avail, still keeps spiking up to 100% and it lags like hell. I have no more ideas

 

[why_wolf]

yeah this really makes no sense to me. At this point, for me at least, I'd probably be considering redoing the whole ESXi installation just so I could start over from a clean default platform. But I really don't think the problem is coming from ESXi itself but from some setting we are skipping over or have misinterpreted and plugged in wrong.

Have you tried slapping the side of the computer and shouting "work, d@#m you!"