I have an embedded VM (Oracle Virtual Box with Windows 10 64 Bit) on ESXI 6.7 VM (Windows 10 64 Bit). The embedded VM has few software installed in it. I am facing performance issue running embedded VM inside ESXI VM. I noticed that the embedded VM operations like accessing the applications inside it, working on them is 100-150% slower than the same embedded VM when deployed directly on a host/physical machine (OS installed on h/w) without ESXI.
I have tried the following to optimize the performance for the embedded VM.
1. Taken h/w benchmark of the host/physical machine and the ESXI VM. It was observed that benchmark reading (CPU, RAM & Hard Disk) is 15-20% less in ESXI VM compared to physical machine.
2. As recommended, I have kept 10-20% of total RAM not allocated to guest VM. Multiple 4 vCPU assigned to ESXI VM and 2vCPU to embedded VM.
3. VTx enabled and expose h/w virtualization enabled for embedded VM.
4. Used SSD in thick provision since there are lot of disk operation by the software in embedded VM.
5. Looked at parameters like load average, %READY, memory over commitment using esxtop command and they look to be normal.
6. Installed latest drivers for ESXI VM and embedded VM as well.
Please let me know other areas I need to look at.
Thanks,
Bidyut