Does VMWare Fusion negatively affect system performance?

Since installing Fusion my Mac Pro seems to hang (SPOD) more often even when Fusion isn't running. Has anybody else experienced this? My Mac Pro never used to display the SPOD at all but now it happens every day. I've got plenty of memory (12GB) and the hard drive is at less than 50% capacity.

Solution 1:

VMware Fusion has a few daemons running always, even if it's not open:

• vmnet-bridge
• vmnet-dhcpd
• vmnet-netifup
• vmnet-natd

as well as the application '/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app'

I'm not convinced these would be the cause of your issues, though.

Have you tried removing VMware Fusion and seeing if the problem persists? Have you checked for other services starting at login, for example?

Solution 2:

As soon as you start doing heavy disk I/O in your VM (or anywhere on your system) this will affect your overall performance. Even if you have multiple CPU's or a lot of memory available.

In Fusion's preferences ("General" -> "Performance") you have the option to optimize it for "virtual machine disk performance" or "Mac OS application performance". Try switching this option and check if it helps your system performance.

I have never experienced a hang or crash caused by Fusion myself.