Hmm…I am currently testing disabling
/proc/sys/vm/compaction_proactiveness
EDIT: This seems to have resolved the issue.
For future reference, here is how you do this.
To test it temporarily you can use:
sudo bash -c "echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/compaction_proactiveness"
To make it permanent, use a sysctl drop-in
sudo bash -c "echo vm.compaction_proactiveness=0 > /etc/sysctl.d/vmware.conf"