Investigating virtual machine resources in VMware Fusion
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Investigating virtual machine resources in VMware Fusion

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Article ID: 310353

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Updated On: 04-10-2025

Products

VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

This article helps you to determine if a lack of Mac resources is causing problems with the operation of the virtual machine.



Symptoms:

A virtual machine:

  • cannot be powered on
  • cannot be resumed
  • cannot be suspended
  • cannot perform a snapshot operation
A virtual machine or a Mac running virtual machines:
  • has stopped responding
  • has performance problems
  • is slow
  • is experiencing excessive disk use

 

 

Environment

VMware Fusion 8.x
VMware Fusion Pro 10.x
VMware Fusion 10.x
VMware Fusion 11.x
VMware Fusion Pro 8.x
VMware Fusion Pro 11.x

Resolution

A lack of physical resources on the Mac, such as memory, disk space, and CPUs, can cause problems both in the virtual machine and on the Mac where the virtual machine is running.

To determine if your Mac has enough resources to support your virtual machines, you must determine the resources allocated to your virtual machines and the amount of disk space used by them.

To determine the resources allocated to your virtual machines and the amount of disk space used by them:

Note: Ensure to power off your virtual machines before performing these steps.

  1. To determine the memory (RAM) size and the number of processors (CPUs) allocated to your virtual machine(s):
     
    1. Open Fusion.
    2. Go to Window > Virtual Machine Library.
    3. Right-click the virtual machine and click Settings.
    4. Click Processors & Memory (Fusion 4.x and later) / RAM (Fusion 3.x and earlier). The memory size and the number of processors allocated to the virtual machine are displayed under Memory / RAM and Processors.

      Note: If you power on more than one virtual machine at a time, repeat this procedure for each virtual machine. A sum of memory allocated to each virtual machine indicates the RAM used when these virtual machines are run simultaneously. Similarly, a sum of processors allocated to each virtual machine indicates the number of processors used when these virtual machines are run simultaneously.
       
  2. To determine the amount of disk space used by your virtual machine, right-click your virtual machine bundle and click Get Info. For more information, see Locating the virtual machine bundle in VMware Fusion (344570). The disk space used by the virtual machine is displayed in the top-right corner of the Get Info window.

After determining the resources allocated to your virtual machines, compare it with the amount of resources available on the Mac.

If the resources allocated to your virtual machines are more than the available resources on the Mac:
  • Reduce the number of virtual machines powered on at the same time.
  • Reduce the amount of (Memory / RAM and Processor) resources assigned to the virtual machines.
  • Increase the amount of resources on the Mac. This includes a RAM upgrade or a hard drive upgrade.

Note: After performing any one or all of these corrective actions, ensure that you are not experiencing the problem again.

If you have sufficient resources on your Mac, but are still experiencing problems with the Mac operating system or one of the virtual machine's guest operating system, you must verify if the operating systems are working properly. For more information, see Verifying the health of an operating system (328845).

For more information about memory, see Understanding memory allocation for VMware Fusion (308012).

 

Additional Information

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