[Spice-devel] Windows 10 KVM guest very slow in SPICE console

[Carlos González]

Hello.

I installed a Windows 10 KVM guest through libvirt on an openSUSE host. I
use it with SPICE console through host's installed package virt-viewer. The
guest uses qcow2 storage format, and has RAM ballooning range of 2 Gb - 3
Gb. I installed all due drivers in the guest through spice-guest-tools
installer.
Host hardware is a laptop probably dating from 7-8 years ago, with i3 2.53
GHz, 4 Gb RAM, and a 7200 rpm SATA hard disk. Yes, it's a bit old already.

>From the moment Windows finishes booting and prepares to load the login
screen -the one with the hour before choosing a user-, it takes a minute or
more to actually load the login screen, and even when it does it takes more
time to even become responsive.

So I finally get to enter the desktop, and wait some more seconds to let it
finish load all the stuff it needs. But in summary, when totally ready to
use, the guest always feels generally slow: programs or windows take time
to be able to load -even if just the file manager-; some times they never
even open. And if stressing the guest just a little more in order to do a
bit of daily work such as opening web browser or a couple of MS Office
documents, it just hangs and becomes unresponsive and broken.

I tried with a VNC console and also RDP. Though they feel laggy in general,
they are definitely quite usable in comparison with what I'm getting with
SPICE.

This is making no sense. AFAIK, SPICE was designed to be a "faster"
protocol than VNC, and it's being totally the opposite, at least for me.

Out of curiosity I tried another Windows 10 KVM guest, also with RAM
ballooning 2 - 3 Gb, but this time installed in an apart server using
Proxmox VE, with RAW storage format. The server is in the same local
network segment as my host.

I got exactly the same results: slow SPICE, fast VNC, even when guest is
not even installed in host itself but in an external server, being accessed
through LAN. Local network had no traffic by the way; just laptop host and
Proxmox server there.

I used to think it was problem with my host's hardware. But the test in the
Proxmox server would suggest not. In Proxmox I tried increasing guest's RAM
to 6 Gb with no real difference neither, while with VNC console it worked
ok with just the 3 Gb RAM.

Could anyone help please?
Thanks beforehand.
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