VirtualBox on Mac

AdamF

1 CPU 2GB Ram, windows 7 Guest OS compared to VMWare Fusion (same guest specs).

The virtualbox guest seems to run a substantial amount slower than the vmware fusion.

Any ideas on where I can look to figure out why?

5.1.30 is the version I'm running on my Mac. I run a Windows box with it and don't really have any issues. Although I am just using it for Hyper-V administration, so I don't know how much I would notice anyway.

DustinB3403

@scottalanmiller said in VirtualBox on Mac:

It's the latest version of VBox, correct? I assume so but have to ask.

Yes.

scottalanmiller

Is 3D acceleration and 2D acceleration turned on?

dafyre

Do you have Fusion installed on this Mac as well?

DustinB3403

There is a noticeable delay with the cursor, it "feels" and looks slow when being used.

scottalanmiller

Are the VirtualBox drivers installed in the guest?

DustinB3403

@scottalanmiller said in VirtualBox on Mac:

Is 3D acceleration and 2D acceleration turned on?

Yes, I enabled both for testing.

@dafyre said in VirtualBox on Mac:

Do you have Fusion installed on this Mac as well?

Yes, running side by side for comparison.

DustinB3403

@scottalanmiller said in VirtualBox on Mac:

Are the VirtualBox drivers installed in the guest?

I didn't think there were drives for vbox... hrm. Investigating. (dumb me).

dafyre

Make sure all of your Fusion VMs are shut down. It seems that only one Hypervisor can conrol the CPU's virtualization stuff at a time.

DustinB3403

@dafyre said in VirtualBox on Mac:

Make sure all of your Fusion VMs are shut down. It seems that only one Hypervisor can conrol the CPU's virtualization stuff at a time.

That is what I thought as well, and did test it. But it still felt slow.

dafyre

@dustinb3403 said in VirtualBox on Mac:

@dafyre said in VirtualBox on Mac:

Make sure all of your Fusion VMs are shut down. It seems that only one Hypervisor can conrol the CPU's virtualization stuff at a time.

That is what I thought as well, and did test it. But it still felt slow.

Install the guest additions in your VBox VM and see how that works.

scottalanmiller

@dustinb3403 said in VirtualBox on Mac:

@scottalanmiller said in VirtualBox on Mac:

Are the VirtualBox drivers installed in the guest?

I didn't think there were drives for vbox... hrm. Investigating. (dumb me).

Yes, and they are pretty important. That'll easily do it.

All virtualization products need PV drivers to be performant at all. Otherwise everything has to be done in software.

dbeato

Guest additions
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E36500_01/E36502/html/qs-guest-additions.html

Same is needed for Vmware, Xenserver and so forth.

Reid Cooper

Guest additions are a big deal. It should have sped up considerably after you installed them.