Disable Side Chael Mitigation in VMware Workstation

In case your VM is ruing slow, you should consider disabling Side Chael Mitigation in VMware. Here's how you can do it.

On some Windows machines, especially on laptops, the Side Chael Mitigation is enabled automatically. This selection is also automatically enabled when the Core Isolation and Memory Integration features are switched on. As you can tell from the feature name itself, along side it Chael Mitigation is really a security feature that stops any malicious apps or processes from performing Side Chael attacks to access and read data from the host kernel, memory, along with other sensitive parts. Unlike regular attacks, Side Chael attacks are sophisticated and difficult to detect.

The downside from it is that when the Side Chael Mitigation feature is enabled, the performance from the VM drops significantly. As such, VMware shows a warning message suggesting that you ought to disable the Side Chael Mitigation feature to improve the virtual machine performance.

If you want to squeeze a little more performance from your virtual machine, you need to disable along side it Chael Mitigation feature. Within this simple and quick guide, allow me to demonstrate the steps to disable along side it Chael Mitigation feature in VMware Workstation.

Important note: Before proceeding, make sure the target virtual machine is completely powered OFF. If the VM is in paused state, you caot alter the Side Chael Mitigation setting.

Disable Side Chael Mitigation in VMware

To disable the Side Chael Mitigation in VMware Workstation, stick to the steps given below.

1. First, open the VMware application. It can be done in Windows by looking it up within the Start menu. If the VMware Workstation is pied for your taskbar, you can click on that too.

2. After opening the VMware application, right-click on the VM for which you want to disable the Side Chael Mitigation and choose the "Settings" option. As I said earlier, the VM ought to be powered OFF completely.

3. Visit the "Options" tab within the VMware Settings window. This is where you will find all of the additional settings associated with your virtual machine.

4. Select the "Advanced" option on the sidebar. Because the name implies, this is when you discover all the advanced settings to customize and better manage your virtual machine.

5. Select the "Disable side chael mitigation for Hyper-V enabled hosts" checkbox.

6. Click the "Ok" button at the bottom of the Settings window.

7. Finally, close and re-open VMware Workstation to fully apply the changes.

That's it. With this, you've disabled the side chael mitigation for any virtual machine on VMware Workstation. In the future, providing begin to see the side-chael mitigation message whenever you switch on the virtual machine. For those who have multiple virtual machines, you may have to do this for anyone VMs individually.

To enable the side-chael mitigation feature, UNCHECK the "Disable side chael mitigation for Hyper-V enabled hosts" checkbox under "VM rarr; Settings rarr; Options rarr; Advanced".

FAQ

Can one disable side chael mitigation in VMware Player?
No, you can't. The choice is only available for VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion. That said, you can still try to disable Memory Integrity and Core Isolation features in Windows 10. Doing this should work for VMware player.

Is changing side chael mitigation settings in VMware safe?
Side chael mitigation is really a security feature. Disabling it'll lower the safety for both host and guest machines. As a result, it's important for you to determine if you are willing to sacrifice a little bit of security for better performance. Generally, if you're following the best practices of using a pc and taking advantage of a good antivirus software, there shouldn't be considered a problem in most cases.

Can one enable the side chael mitigation feature in VMware later on?
Yes, you can. Just UNCHECK the "Disable side chael mitigation for Hyper-V enabled hosts" checkbox under "VM rarr; Settings rarr; Options rarr; Advanced" and you're simply good to go.