[Novalug] Win 7 64 painfully slow in KVM on Ubuntu 12.04

Scott Talbert swt@techie.net
Wed Dec 12 09:09:13 EST 2012


I just ran into basically the same exact situation.  I installed Win7 x64 
in a KVM VM on an Ubuntu 12.04 host and saw the same symptoms...extremely 
slow installation, slow performance after installation, etc.  I didn't 
spend a whole lot of time trying to figure it out - I ended up going back 
to VirtualBox, which works fine.  I initially tried the VirtualBox that 
comes with Ubuntu 12.04, but the Win7 installation kept failing.  I got 
the latest version directly from Oracle and Win7 installed fine.  (This 
particular issue might have something to do with my Dell-branded Windows 7 
install?)

Scott

On Wed, 12 Dec 2012, Mark Metz wrote:

> All,
> After an extensive head-banging-against-wall session configuring Macs for
> our work environment, I suggested I could get along equally well with Linux.
>  So, I got the green light to make my main work computer a Linux box.  I
> think the only thing I'll need Windows for now is FileMaker Pro, but it's a
> pretty important app for me.
> I thought as a first try I would use KVM and Virtual Machine Manager to
> install my Win 7 64 VM.  I've always used VirtualBox (It's easy.), but I
> found reports on the interwebs that KVM was better for performance.  That
> has been terrible wrong so far.  So before I blast away the KVM VM and go
> back to VirtualBox, I thought I would run things by the experts.
> 
> I am using an ASUS G51J laptop: i7 nehalem, 8GB 1333, two 500 GB SATA,
> nVidia GeForce GTS 360M.  I did the KVM command line checks to make sure my
> system could handle kernel virtualization.  There isn't a setting in my BIOS
> to turn Intel-VD on or off.  My host OS is Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64-bit.  The
> guest OS is Win 7 64-bit.  I'm using the open source nVidia drivers
> currently.  I'm using VMM 0.9.1.  I don't know how to check versions of
> libvrt and other packages running in the background.  I gave the VM a 50 GB
> raw virtual drive, 4 GB of RAM, and 4 CPU cores.  The install of the guest
> OS was incredibly slow, the updates were incredibly slow, but now that it's
> up and running without the need for DVD drive I/O or Network traffic it's
> still painfully slow.
> 
> I'm going to try and install a guest of a Linux OS and see if that is any
> different in terms of performance.
> 
> I'm guessing there might be something amiss with my VMM settings, but if I
> can't get this figured out quickly I'll need to migrate back to VirtualBox
> so I can get my work done.
> 
> Any help will be greatly appreciated.  I'll monitor my personal email
> throughout the day so can report back any details requested.
> 
> Later,
> 
> Mark
> 
>


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