On 06/28/2012 12:45 PM, Michael Eager wrote:> Hi --
>
> I have a server running CentOS 5.8. It has a 6-core AMD processor,
> 16Gb memory, and a RAID 5 file system. It serves as both a file server
> and to run several VMware virtual machines. The guest machines run
> Windows 7 and various versions of Linux.
>
> The system is running the latest version of VMware Workstation.
> Until recently, I started VMs using the VMware Workstation GUI.
> The system has been very stable and seldom crashes.
>
> Recently, I set up an init script to start several VMs at boot
> time using the vmrun command. This appeared to work correctly,
> but the system has become unstable, freezing at various times.
> When the system freezes, there is no console response and it
> does not respond to a ping. There is nothing in syslog to
> indicate any error.
>
> The script started 8 VMs. I've cut back to now running 4 VMs
> and the system appears stable.
>
> Is there some relation between the number of cores and the number
> of VMs one can run?
>
> Is there something else which might cause the system to crash
> when running multiple VMs?
>
> Any suggestions to identify why the system crashed?
>
Are you staggering the startups of the VMs? The server may be choking
trying to boot 8 machines at once. I suggest starting a VM every 30-60
seconds, so that you aren't trying to boot all 8 at once. Don't know if
it
will help, but it might.