[TriLUG] VMware server and RHEL 4.4 issues

[Roy Vestal]

Folks, got a weird one for you:

I have a vmware-server (the free one, not vmware-esx), that is giving me 
a weird issue. When I start a VM with RHEL 4.4 x86_64 smp kernel using 2 
cpus, the machine takes over 4 1/2 min to boot. With a single cpu with 
smp or non-smp kernel, it boots in less than 45 sec.  The VM is crawling 
after boot, sometimes ssh from the *host* will timeout trying to 
connect. I have shutdown all VM's save one, and still get this 
performance decrease.

Just for fun, I loaded RHEL 4.4 i686 into a vm and it appears to be fine.

Here are the specifics:

H/W:
Dual Opteron Dual Core 1.8MHz
4GB RAM
RAID 1 120GB SATA

S/W:
RHEL 4.4 x86_64 smp on host
4 VM's, all running x86_64 smp

Any ideas, suggestions?
TIA
Roy