I'm running two VM's simultaneously (XP Pro and Win7 Pro) on Ubuntu 10.10, all 3 are x64 editions. I notice slowing from time to time. Both use 1 proc/4 cores with 6GB ram. I've tried changing the virtualization engines but that didn't seem to make a difference. What else can I do other than the usual of disabling services and turning off visual affects?


I have a Dell T7500 with dual quad Xeon 2.53 procs (2 X 4), 18GB ram, and 2 mirrored 500GB.

Nothing speaks as loud as cold hard numbers so best first back up your observations with detailed "evidence": atop, atsar, SAR, psacct, guest remote logging, log analysis, etc, etc anything that allows you to get a grip on default guest behaviour. Once you've got say a weeks worth of data you can for instance graph it, pinpoint peaks in utilization and analyze what bottlenecks you're looking at and then devise a plan how to tackle those. Just turning knobs, haphazardly tweaking without a baseline, doesn't spell out efficient troubleshooting to me.