High CPU on server

[MalcolmS]

Hi

I have a problem similar to that described in a previous post that was closed due to inactivity, but which didn’t have a solution.

I only started using NoMachine a week or so ago.  Prior to that I was using Windows rdp, but it didnt have the screen handling I need.

I have a Win10 Pro server 64 bit, (which is actually a VirtualBox VM), I am connecting to it using the latest NoMachine on another Win10 system, this time Home edition.  All is well when there’s no connection, but as soon as I establish a connection the cpu on the server go right up to around 50-60% even when idle and stays there. It can go up to 100% quite often when there’s some activity.  From task manager the main culprit seems to be “Desktop Window Manager” with around 30-40% continuously and then “NoMachine Node Process (32 bit)” with around 10-14%.

I have tried turning off “Use acceleration for display processing” but it had no effect. I also tried setting “Display Encoding” to MJPEG and H264 as was suggested elsewhere, but again no real impact.

(BTW I cant find where I can get the logs from, so some advise on this please)

Any ideas??

Many Thanks

My versions are:-

NoMachine:  Server 5.3.9 Client 5.3.9 both free version

Client OS:  Win10 Home 32 bit, with all latest patches/updates

Server OS: Win10 Pro 64 bit, with all latest patches/updates.  It is a VirtualBox VM

Server is hosted on Win10 Pro 64 bit

[fra81]

Hi MalcomS,

that could mean that 3D acceleration is not available in the virtual machine, and so the most advanced screen capture mechanisms cannot be used by NoMachine. You can try to assign more CPU resources to your virtual machine. For example, if you assigned only one CPU, that is usually not enough. You may also try to enable 3D acceleration for the guest, but from my experience results are not always as expected and they strongly depend on the system.

If necessary, and you still want to send logs for further inspection, here are instructions: https://www.nomachine.com/DT07M00098. You can send them to forum[at]nomachine[dot]com.

[MalcolmS]

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

I already had 3D acceleration enabled, but had only allocate 1-CPU.  (The host has 4 CPU’s, 8 threads). I doubled this to 2 CPU’s, and the utilisation on the guest dropped by half, which would make sense, since there’s now twice the grunt.  The total CPU on the guest now averages around 35% when idle, each of the 2 tasks I mentioned are now about half what they were, and there’s been a corresponding increase in the host’s cpu usage.

I guess that if I gave the guest 4 CPU’s then the total would halve again.  I haven’t tried this but it would make sense.

So, I guess this is the answer: that NoMachine needs a fair amount of grunt to do what it does. Fortunately I only have 1 VM that I need to log into remotely, (actually it’s my wife’s system from her desk across the room).  If there were several then the host probably wouldn’t cope.

So, I’m pretty happy with the solution.  Thanks once again for the suggestion.

 

[fra81]

You’re welcome!

I’d just like to add that NoMachine can leverage the GPU acceleration in order to reduce drastically the CPU usage in most situations. Unfortunately the actual GPU support level inside virtual machines not always is as required.

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