High CPU usage with virtualbox
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Hi, I want to use pfsense on my home network, but I don't have a spare pc to use. So I trying pfsense in virtualbox on my dell r410 with 2 QLogic BCM5716C Gigabit NICs. The problem is when I run iperf max speed is capped at ~200Mb and CPU is 100%
Can you help me ? -
Tell us what system you have as host and what you have allocated to the nested pfSense. Such things like host CPU, CPU allocated, memory allocated? If you have two core atom or older duo core and you allocate 1 core to pfSense, you gonna get that high cpu usage for 200Mb traffic. Also amount of memory will affect, if you don't have enough RAM, it will start using swap.
If you have higher end CPU and lots of memory, play around with CPU allocation and memory allocation.
Keep in mind the NIC is virtual and will definitely use CPU cycle for the virtual switch. Unlike some real NIC that have their own CPU do the off/on load of traffic.
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I have 2 Xenon L5520 with 12gb ram, in virtualbox I started with 2gb of ram and 2 cores, then 8 cores and I think at some point I used all 16 cores. Still the same, max speed I got was ~300 Mb/s.
Also I installed pfsense on an usb and boot it up. It works flawlessly, I connected my ont to one of the nics, and the other nic to my pc, got ~950Mb/s, with almost no cpu usage.
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Yah, this is out of my league. I don't do virtualbox. Sounds like your issue is within virtualbox. Sounds like issue with Host OS virtual switch or bridge for the virtual OS to connect to.
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Any more suggestions ?