Windows 10: VM's using VMware on W10 Host with Storage Spaces randomly fail

Hi folks

Running some VM's on W10 Host (x-64 PRO) with VMware workstation Rel 14 I get random failures if the VM's are on storage spaces. The same VM's work perfectly when on external SSD's or internal standard (non Storage space area) HDD's.

The failures are seemingly totally random and could be something to do with the underlying file system of the storage space array -- don't know enough about Ms's implementation of storage spaces so can't say.

I suggest though if using Storage spaces for your VM's and using VMware I'd back them up to standard devices in case of failure.

I've sent log and report to VMware (fully licensed for VMware workstation Rel 14).

Message comes up ………,vdmk failed and the VM hangs. hast to be forceably powered off from the VM menu. It shows one of the virtual disk areas has had some I/O problem -=-it's not always the same number - it's random. intermittent and 100% unpredictable so I've given up the idea of storage spaces for Virtual Machines currently.

Strange thing is the OTHER way around - running Windows VM's also on VMware workstation 14 on a Linux host running RAID 0 no problems whatsoever when the VM's are on the RAID 0 arrays.

So the identical VM's fail on windows but not Linux -- hope VMware can sort this out - or Ms need to fix problems with Storage spaces.

Haven't sent a report to Ms as I can bet they'll say it's VMware's problem not ours.

Cheers
jimbo

:)

 

Unity Mode Fix for W10 VMware VM's on Linux Hosts


Hi there

This seems to work fine for Windows 10 VM's on some Linux Hosts.

1) Uninstall VMware tools on the VM - shut down but don't re-power on
2) uninstall open-vm-tools on your HOST machine - typically as root or sudo yum autoremove open-vm-tools or whatever it is in your distro.
3) reboot the host
4) power on the W10 VM
5) install VMware tools
6) re-start the W10 again

Solved -- now Unity is working !!!

Here's mine running W10 on Centos 7 Host - Menu shown and EXCEL 2010 on the CENTOS desktop. Menu auto hides - just mouse point top left hand corner of screen. Brilliant way of running Windows VM's -- I think the whole Unity mode has been vastly underplayed - especially when you have several monitors !!!!.


Cheers
jimbo

 

Vmware on HOST W10 Machine Networks don't work


Hi there

trying various VM's on a HOST W10 under VMWARE WORKSTATION 10 -- (XP / W7 / W8.1 / W10 / Linux ) -- all these fail to start network either in BRIDGED or NAT mode.

If the HOST is now a W8.1 system connections all work for these machines

Still looks like Networking problems exist in W10 -- whether it's Windows or in VMware I don't know.

Maybe it's time to try out HYPER-V !!!


Cheers
jimbo

 

VMWare VM in Hpyer V


Hi there

OK not natively - but you can run a W10 VM with HYPER-V enabled ON THE VM !! and then run a VM on that.

Actually if you are using an SSD or better more than 1 SSD for storing the VM's the response isn't actually as bad as you might think !!! - ensure plenty of RAM and ensure the HOST (Physical machine) isn't too busy. Suggest you have an i5 CPU at least too.

To avoid confusion here

1) W10 HOST - HYPER-V NOT enabled. VMware workstation running
2) W10 VM created on VMWARE with HYPER-V enabled on this VM
3) Create VM under HYPER-V on the W10 VM created in step 2.

This type of multi-level VM works better though on HOST Linux machines as the Host OS is much leaner so almost ZERO overhead consumed by the host. Esxi is a great tool for this if you want to play around with this type of stuff.

A while ago I was using Esxi to create a Virtual W2k3 Server which had two W7 VM's and an XP VM running on it. Performance was fine - and that was in the days before SSD's were even thought of - much less being affordable.

I know slightly OT but I enclose the reference here for people who might be interested in this sort of stuff. Esxi is FREE too.

Free VMware vSphere Hypervisor, Free Virtualization (ESXi) | VMware United Kingdom

Note though Esxi can be quite picky with hardware - google "White box" for hardware Esxi likes - and it's really picky over the network adapter(s) that work on it-- INTEL PRO Nic's always seems to work in my experience on pretty well any OS.

@Kari - I think running a Windows VM on this and then running a VM on HYPER-V on this Windows VM would be interesting. The nice thing about Esxi is that 99.9% of resources are passed to the VM's -- so this should work almost indistinguishably from a HOST machine running HYPER-V.

I'll hope tp have a go with this later -- I've got some spare time this week - and plenty of spare machine "Horse Power". My main worry will be getting the Nic to work --I think I've still got a usable Intel PRO 100/1000 card somewhere.

Cheers
jimbo