When BOINC is running my Hyper-V VMs are unbelievably slow. Basically unusable.

When I look at the task manager the "Virtual Machine Worker Process" is either using almost no CPU (BOINC OFF) or using an even amount of CPU as the other BOINC processes when BOINC is ON.

It's not a hardware bottleneck:
ASUS Z87-WS Motherboard
Core i7-4770K
32GB RAM
2x Samsung 840 Pros (OS)
4x Western Digital Red 1TB drives - RAID10 (Data)
2x GTX 770s
2x Gigabit NICs in LACP team

Snooze GPU doesn't affect anything.

Has anyone else experienced this? It's a clean Windows 8.1 install, not an upgrade.

When BOINC is running my Hyper-V VMs are unbelievably slow.

You say VMs, plural. So how many are they?
How many CPU cores do they get to use per VM?
How much memory?

When I look at the task manager the "Virtual Machine Worker Process" is either using almost no CPU (BOINC OFF) or using an even amount of CPU as the other BOINC processes when BOINC is ON.

I don't follow. Are you saying that when BOINC is off, that your VMs aren't using CPU either, while when BOINC runs its processes use as much CPU cycles as the VMs?

Which projects do you run?
How many CPU cores is BOINC allowed to use?
Have you tried yet to tell BOINC to use 50% or 75% of CPU cores, so that the remaining CPU cores can run the GPUs and the VMs?

---

The number of VMs running is irrelevant, I currently have 4 VMs (3 Generation 1, and 1 Generation 2). Ubuntu 13.10, Windows XP, Windows 7 x64 and Windows Server 2012 R2 being the Generation 2 VM.

The problem is with the Generation 1 VMs. Generation 2 VMs don't appear to suffer from this issue. So if only Server 2012 R2 is running it's fine but as soon as I start any of the Generation 1 VMs I get this issue.

Each VM uses dynamic memory, from 1-4GB. My host memory isn't even 50% used...ever. The generation 1 VMs sit at about 1-2GB and the Generation 2 sits at about 2GB. So even if all of the VMs were maxed I'd be at 50% but they're not maxing out anyway.

Doesn't matter how many cores I assign. 1 CPU each, 2 CPU each, same behavior.

And yes, the VMs are doing nothing. They are sitting there, not really doing much right now as this is a fresh install and I haven't gotten around to doing anything on them because of the performance issues with BOINC. So their CPU (and the VMPC process) uses is like 0-2% max at any given time but as soon as I start BOINC the VMPC process jumps to 1/9th of 100% (8 BOINC apps + VMPC).

If I change BOINC to "Use at most 50% CPU time" there is no difference. The usage percent drops in half obviously but the VMWP usage = the same usage of the other 8 BOINC processes.

If I change BOINC to "On multiprocessor systems use at most 50% of the processors there is no difference. VMWP = the same usage of the other 4 BOINC processes.

The only project I run is World Community Grid the current processes appear to be fight aids at home? (fahv_vina_7.06) & (fahv_vina_prod_64)

Thanks!

Just for giggles I turned off Dynamic Memory but it had no effect. Same issue.

Nothing? Has no one else tried this or seen this?

Any Generation 1 VM I create has terrible performance issues with BOINC running...

I did forward your problem to the BOINC developer most proficient in using VMs, but he's been very busy lately with all kinds of bug-fixes in anticipation of the new BOINC release. I won't prod him again on it until after 7.2.xx has been released to the public. Which should be any day now.

---

What happens if you run something other than idle priority load on the W8.1? How about running something on the VMs, idle or non-idle priority?

Some post that could be useful
Looks like you shouldn't run BOINC in parent partition
And finally, sorry, but you're not the first one

So it looks like the issue is that the hypervisor that my OS is running on is giving the host OS priority over the VMs. That makes sense but it also sucks because I don't think running BOINC inside a VM is going to allow it access to my GPUs for crunching :(

Not sure if RemoteFX would even be capable of assisting with that issue. I assume not.

I may just have to live with it. But I'd still like to hear what the BOINC developer has to say about it.

As for what happens with idle/loaded nothing really changes. BOINC on = terrible performance. BOINC off = Works fine.

When I use stress on the Ubuntu VMs the virtual CPU spikes to 100% but the overall performance remains relatively the same and I don't see a major change in the VMWP (it's only got 1 vCPU on a logical 8 core system).

So it looks like the issue is that the hypervisor that my OS is running on is giving the host OS priority over the VMs. That makes sense but it also sucks because I don't think running BOINC inside a VM is going to allow it access to my GPUs for crunching :(

Not sure if RemoteFX would even be capable of assisting with that issue. I assume not.

This post from Microsoft doesn't look promising. NVIDIA has some VM related products but I don't think they are much help here.

If the GPU apps you would like to run don't use much CPU you could run those on the host and CPU apps in VM. Not pretty but at least it ought to work.