Maintaining Processor Affinity Under VMware

[James Bourne]

Recent versions of VMware Workstation (5.5.x or later) support processor virtualisation. VMware's processor virtualisation can conflict with FireDaemon's CPU Binding (or affinity).

For example, assuming you have a single CPU dual core machine, you might want to setup FireDaemon to run a VMware virtual machine that runs entirely on CPU core 0. If you have configured the virtual machine to use both virtual processors, then the virtual machine will run across both cores.

To resolve this, you need to modify your virtual machine's VMX file and add the following lines:

processor0.use = "FALSE"
processor1.use = "FALSE"

You will receive the following warning:

You have specified that no processors are available for this virtual machine. Your processor configuration will be ignored and all processors will be used instead.

It's safe to check Never show this hint again and click OK.

This configuration will stop the virtual machine from binding to specific CPUs or cores and inherit the CPU binding affinity specified in your FireDaemon configuration.

For more information on setting up VMware Workstation under FireDaemon please see the HOWTO.