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VMWARE - how much power do I need?

G

groovin

Senior member
I dont have much space in my new place to house the dozen or so boxes I use for my own experiments at home. I was thinking about picking up a VMWare workstation license so i can clear up the space under my desk.

so my questions are:

-how much horsepower should my computer have if i run linux (gentoo) as the host OS, and windows as the guest OS? Let me clarify, I am aware of the minimun system requirements, however I want to know what do I need to get decent performance? I know 'decent' is relative...

-how many guest OS's can be turned on at the same time?

thanks
 
The last time I tried it, I was using a dual p3 866 w/512MB ram. It wasn't pretty. 😛

I suspect ram was the issue though.
 
Well since you're running an omg optimized gentoo isntall you can probably run 4 or 5 VMs with like 128M of memory and a 486 =)

Really it's mostly memory bound so get as much as possible. I have a P4 3Ghz notebook with 1G memory and I can run 2 VMs and do things in the host OS with almost no slowdown, 3 VMs would probably be my limit though. Obviously it depends on the load though, having both VMs thrashing the disk would kill performance across the board no matter what.

Think about how much memory you want to use, i.e. how much per VM (I generally give Windows 256M) and how much left for the host. CPU time probably won't be a problem unless you do something stupid like install gentoo in 3 VMs at once, but multiple CPUs always helps since you'll have mulitple OSes running at once.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Well since you're running an omg optimized gentoo isntall you can probably run 4 or 5 VMs with like 128M of memory and a 486 =)

Really it's mostly memory bound so get as much as possible. I have a P4 3Ghz notebook with 1G memory and I can run 2 VMs and do things in the host OS with almost no slowdown, 3 VMs would probably be my limit though. Obviously it depends on the load though, having both VMs thrashing the disk would kill performance across the board no matter what.

Think about how much memory you want to use, i.e. how much per VM (I generally give Windows 256M) and how much left for the host. CPU time probably won't be a problem unless you do something stupid like install gentoo in 3 VMs at once, but multiple CPUs always helps since you'll have mulitple OSes running at once.
Click to expand...

Agreed. And put the VMs on a different spindle (disk) from your host OS. Get loads of RAM.
 
VM's is a system hog though, don't exsepect to run VM and play games at the same time. No to mention if you are running multiple one's at the same time it's a HUGE system hog, atleast for me.
 
Duh, you're running multiple OSes at a time, how could it not be a system hog? But I have played q3 while VMWare was running and it works alright as long as the VM isn't doing something CPU intensive or you have a SMP machine.
 
Well, I'm running VM on our server (P4 2,53Ghz/1Gb) and all OSes are on separate SCSI disks. Its more than decent. Lots of RAM helps, separate HDD for each OS helps...
 
thanks for the replies

"Well since you're running an omg optimized gentoo isntall you can probably run 4 or 5 VMs with like 128M of memory and a 486 =) "

actually i never believed in that whole optimization thing, there might be some truth to it, but way less than the typical gentoo user will admit.

da finn, how many OS's do u run at once?
 
Just put the VMs on a separate physical hard drive and buy 1-2GB of RAM depending on how many VMs you want. With 1.5GBs of RAM I can run probably 4-5 VMs with no problems with each VM allocated somewhere around 200MB of memory (more for servers, less for cli only linux/bsd, less for XP) unless it's for a ram hog application.

Gaidin
 
i dotn think ill be running more than 1... maybe 2 VMs at a time. This is only for edcuational purposes only.

=) thats pretty funny HKS
 
You get approx. 67% native speed under virtualization, in my estimation. As everyone else has mentioned, RAM is the critical resource requirement. 1GB is okay, but having closer to 2GB is very useful if you're planning on running 2 VMs concurrently.
 
Originally posted by: groovin
thanks for the replies

"Well since you're running an omg optimized gentoo isntall you can probably run 4 or 5 VMs with like 128M of memory and a 486 =) "

actually i never believed in that whole optimization thing, there might be some truth to it, but way less than the typical gentoo user will admit.

da finn, how many OS's do u run at once?
Click to expand...

Just 2...
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
actually i never believed in that whole optimization thing, there might be some truth to it, but way less than the typical gentoo user will admit.
Click to expand...

Duh, it was a joke.
Click to expand...

yeah, i noticed. thought id put my .02 in anyways.
 
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