@bmike It might be a while, it's brand-new to me, only had it a couple of months. One day I'll sit down & properly sort out that last bit; everything else flies, with the dual 6-core 3.46s in there & 64GB RAM - I haven't found a task that makes it blink yet ;-)
@GrahamPerrin Cool - so much to learn when you start breaking / changing the parts of the VM system. I didn't explain my thoughts - perhaps the workload was prone to thrashing before the OP made the modifications? Seems a reach so I agree with you it's probably not the first stone to turn.