Hello everybody!
Watch this video to find out how to speed up VMWare, Oracle VirtualBox and Microsoft
Hyper-V virtual machines.
The virtualization technology is widely used in various fields, from servers to desktop
computers.
Although it may be quite easy to set up a virtual machine on your computer, its performance
always remains to be one of those tricky issues.
So, in today’s video I’m going to show you a few methods to help you boost your virtual
machine.
This tutorial is quite generalized, so it is going to be helpful no matter what particular
hypervisor you are using.
Before you change any settings, restart the computer.
If your virtual machine has worked normally until now, and then it suddenly started to
freeze, just try restarting the computer or the server where this machine is installed.
This way, you’ll be able to get a clue why it started to work like that.
More system memory One of the most important things to affect
the machine’s performance is the system memory.
Virtual machines are sensitive to the amount of system memory they can access.
That is why you should allocate enough memory for the virtual machine according to the minimal
requirements of a specific operating system.
Generally speaking, it’s recommended to give at least a third of total system memory
of the host computer to the virtual machine you want to run.
If you create a virtual machine and it appears to have not enough system memory for normal
operation, you can change its settings to add more.
Before doing it, make sure that the virtual machine is turned off.
It is also not recommended to assign more than 50% of the actually available virtual
memory to the virtual machine.
For normal operation of any virtual machine, it will suffice to have 8 Gb of system memory
in your main computer.
Try setting a higher value and see what happens to your virtual machine now.
Also, you can add more CPU cores to increase the effect.
Allocate more CPU resource A working virtual machine puts most pressure
on the central processing unit (CPU).
Therefore, the more CPU resource a virtual machine can use, the better (and faster) it
will work.
If a virtual machine is installed on a computer with a multi-core CPU, you can allocate several
cores for the virtual machine by changing its settings.
A virtual machine using two or more CPU cores will work significantly faster than a machine
using only one core.
It is not recommended to install a virtual machine on a computer with a single-core or
dual-core CPU.
Such machine will be too slow and ineffective in performing any tasks.
Proper video settings One more setting that can affect virtual machine
performance is its video options.
For example, enabling 2D or 3D acceleration in VirtualBox can make some applications work
much faster.
If your virtual machine uses certain apps to work with graphics, allocating more video
memory can speed up work routines.
Unsurprisingly, this setting depends on the configuration of the graphics adapter used
by the host PC.
Dynamically allocated or fixed-size virtual hard disk?
When creating a virtual machine, you can choose to have one of the two possible virtual disk
types.
By default, the virtual machine will use a dynamically allocated hard disk, the size
of which increases over time as you add more files or apps.
That is, if you create a new with a dynamically allocated hard disk having a maximal size
of 30 Gb, it’s not going to take away all that space from your main hard disk immediately.
After installation of an operating system and programs, it can still be about 10 Gb.
As you add more files to the virtual disk, its size can grow until it reaches 30 Gb.
This is pretty convenient as every virtual machine won’t take too much space on the
host computer’s hard disk.
However, a dynamically allocated virtual disk is slower than a fixed-size one.
When you choose to have a fixed-size virtual hard disk, all of its space will be assigned
regardless of how much data will be written to such disk.
That is, a fixed-size hard disk of a virtual machine takes up more space on your physical
drive but it copies or saves files and data faster.
If you have initially created a virtual machine with a dynamically allocated hard disk, you
can change the disk type to fixed-size later, if necessary.
Follow the link below to visit our channel and watch a special video about it.
Installing virtual machine tools After a guest operating system is installed
on your virtual machine, the first thing you do is to install a package of tools or drivers
for such virtual machine, for example: VirtualBox Guest Additions or VMware Tools.
Such packages contain drivers to help the guest operating system work faster.
They are easy to install.
In VirtualBox, boot the guest operating system and select Devices / Insert Guest Additions
CD Image…
After that, start the installer which will appear as a separate disk in the folder This
PC of the guest operating system.
In VMware Workstation, select the menu VM / Install VMWare Tools…
After that, start the installer which will appear as a separate disk in the folder This
PC of the guest operating system.
Add the folder containing the virtual machine to the exclusions of your antivirus.
One more way to boost the virtual machine is to add the folder containing the machine
to the exclusions of your antivirus.
Along with other files, the antivirus also scans the virtual machine files which affects
its performance.
However, the antivirus has no access to the files within the guest operating system of
your computer, which makes such scanning useless.
You can use the Task Manager to find out if the antivirus scans virtual machine files.
If you look here and see many virtual machine processes, try turning the antivirus off or
adding the machine’s folder to the exclusions of your antivirus.
Then the antivirus will ignore all files in such folder.
Also, freezes can be caused by installing a new antivirus, so it’s better to check
if an antivirus got installed as an extra bonus with some other software.
If that’s the case, just remove it from the Control Panel.
Enable Intel VT-x or AMD-V We also recommend checking hardware acceleration
settings.
Intel VT-x and AMD-V are special virtualization technologies meant to improve performance
of virtual machines.
However, it may not be enabled automatically in some computers.
To enable such a function, you should go to BIOS and turn the function on manually.
So if there is a performance issue with your virtual machine, make sure that these virtualization
features are enabled in BIOS, and then turn them on in the virtual machine.
A virtual machine and SSD If your computer uses a hard disk to store
virtual machines, try moving the machine to an SSD.
This is going to produce a huge boost.
Adding an SSD is actually the first and the best upgrade for a computer these days.
It will speed up the computer greatly - as well as the virtual machine you have installed.
Also, we don’t recommend keeping virtual machine disks on removable media.
They work even slower than any internal HDD.
Improving performance within the virtual machine An operating system installed on a virtual
machine is almost the same as the one you have on your main computer.
You can improve your virtual machine performance following the same principles and using the
same methods that are good for any other operating system.
For example, system performance improves when you close background programs or those starting
automatically with the system.
System performance can also be affected by the need for defragmentation (if it is installed
on an HDD) and so on.
Change your application One more solution to boost a virtual machine’s
performance could be changing the actual program which is used to handle it.
Some users claim that a specific hypervisor works faster in their case.
So yes, you can transfer your virtual machine to another hypervisor, and you’re welcome
to watch a special video to see how.
LINK How to move a virtual machine
Disable core isolation feature If the virtual machine lags or freezes when
you start it, it usually happens after the operating system gets updated.
The primary cause might be the activated core isolation feature.
So if your virtual machine starts lagging and freezing, make sure that this option is
turned off.
Use the search function to find Core Isolation and disable it.
Otherwise, open Microsoft Defender, go to “Device security” - “Core isolation
details” and drag the slider to turn it off.
Some programs may have a conflict with the already installed components such as Hyper-V,
WSL2 or Sandbox.
In VirtualBox you will see this icon In this case, they’ll have to be disabled.
For that purpose, open Control Panel / Programs / Programs and Features / Turn Windows features
on or off, and uncheck the box next to Hyper-V. If this method doesn’t help, you need to
use a command to disable them.
To do it, open the Command Prompt as administrator and run this command:
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off After that, restart the operating system and
check how it works; the icon should change to this one.
Programs to work with virtual machines Talking of virtual machine performance and
how it may depend on using a specific hypervisor, some users argue that Oracle VirtualBox is
the fastest application for virtual machines, while others find VMware Workstation or Microsoft
Hyper-V to be the best.
However, performance of a virtual machine on a particular computer depends on a number
of factors including the current version of the guest operating system, its type, system
settings and virtual machine settings, performance of the host computer itself and so on.
In any case, you can always try another program.
A virtual machine can be moved from one hypervisor to another, and you can see it in detail by
watching a previous video.
LINK How to move a virtual machine If you need to recover data from a virtual
machine, use a dedicated tool - Hetman Partition Recovery.
Hetman Partition Recovery can handle both virtual machine disks and virtual hard disks.
You can always recover any data lost while working with a virtual machine - VMware, VirtualBox,
Hyper-V, and others.
If the virtual machine is no longer working, its virtual disk is damaged or important files
are lost, our program will always help you to bring them back.
That is all for now!
Hopefully, this video was useful.
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Leave comments to ask questions.
Thank you for watching.
Good luck.