VMware

[KoolDrew]

I want to use VMware just to try olut some linux distros, but IU only have 256MB of RAM. Will I be able to run just 1 other linux distro under VMware. I am planning on running Debian in VMWare and Windows XP is my main OS. The reason I want to do this is because I hate having to reboot just to use another OS.

 

[ColKurtz]

You're gonna have to get more RAM. XP + the VMWare environtment itself are going to take up most (read: all) of your physical RAM, much less carving some out for the VMs themselves.

I couldn't even create a VM with 128MB of Ram (VMware workstation 4.5 on XP). I got an error - don't remember what it said specifically but it basically was saying I didn't have enough memory. Maybe I could have worked around the error (I didn't really try) but even if I did I knew it would run dirt slow. Installed it on a beefier workstation and it's running fine.

Get more RAM.

EDIT - sorry... for some reason I thought you said you only had 128MB. You should probably be OK with 256, but of course things WILL run faster with more RAM.

 

[mattsaccount]

Yeah, with VMWare, you dedicate a portion of your RAM to the virtual machine, and the remainder stays with your main OS. With only 256, you're looking at 128mb for your main OS + 128 for the virtual machine. That's very little memory for any modern OS and you will almost certainly notice a large amount of disk thrashing. You can have as many virtual machines as you like--you just won't (realistically) be able to run more than one simultaneously (i.e. the rest remain "off").

 

[KoolDrew]

Thanks for the responses. Those were the answers I thought I were gonna get, but I just wanted to hear from other people who have used it.

 

[symbol]

Originally posted by: ColKurtz
You're gonna have to get more RAM. XP + the VMWare environtment itself are going to take up most (read: all) of your physical RAM, much less carving some out for the VMs themselves.

Next week, I'll be in the same situation. I'll be using winxp sp2 as my main OS and vmware to help me with my lamp (linux, apache, mysql, php) development.

Are my system specs, below, sufficient for running vmware?

Asus P5GD1 915P P4 800FSB LGA775
Intel LGA 775 Pentium 4 540 3.2 GHz
Corsair 1GB DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 Value Select Memory

 

[b4u]

Well, from my experience:

P4 2.4c with 1Gb DDR400 Kingston HyperX memory

I've setup up a Windows 2003 server and a windows XP Pro. Both running at same time (W2K3 domain server, WinXP as workstation).

Well, it works great ... I mean I get a warning on starting up the second virtual machine (mostly WinXP), that tells me the system will start swapping memory, but at the end, it works ...

Running 3 operation systems (host and the 2 clients) will obvioustly take some sweat of your machine, but I personally can stand it ... it's a test environment, to test the development and mainly the deployment of my J2EE applications ... and for that I get a test system which I can play and crash at will

I have a snapshot on each virtual machine to backup my testing, and I'm really happy with it ... hurray for VMWare ... works like charm!

 

[ColKurtz]

Originally posted by: symbol

Originally posted by: ColKurtz
You're gonna have to get more RAM. XP + the VMWare environtment itself are going to take up most (read: all) of your physical RAM, much less carving some out for the VMs themselves.

Next week, I'll be in the same situation. I'll be using winxp sp2 as my main OS and vmware to help me with my lamp (linux, apache, mysql, php) development.

Are my system specs, below, sufficient for running vmware?

Asus P5GD1 915P P4 800FSB LGA775
Intel LGA 775 Pentium 4 540 3.2 GHz
Corsair 1GB DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 Value Select Memory

You're just showing off, aren't you ; )

Yes, your specs are more than adequate. My specs are less than yours (Thinkpad T42p - Centrino 1.8GHz, 1GB PC2700DDR) and I have no noticeable problems running 3 VM's simultaneously. Unlike b4u, I don't even start swapping until I launch the 3rd VM (I give 256MB to each VM).

Once piece of advice is to disable screen-savers in your VMs. If you leave a VM running and are working on your host system, having one or more screen savers running in your VMs will definatly start thrashing your CPU. This applies to the more graphical ones, at least. If you want a screensaver for security reasons, go with a blank screen.

 

[JackMDS]

Runing any of the Virtuals with less then 1GB RAM is really not very stable.

BTW. If you use the Microsoft VPC these are the OSs that can run on it.

Link to: List of 808 OSs that run on Microsoft VPC.

Link to: Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 Free 45-Day Trial Edition.

The Virtual PC software it self is relatively small so it is not a big deal to try both VMware and MS-VPC and see which works better in your specific situation.

:sun:

 

[ColKurtz]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
Runing any of the Virtuals with less then 1GB RAM is really not very stable.

I'm going to have to disagree with that statement. Although more RAM is almost always better when dealing with VMware, there are no stability issues when running less than 1GB. The 128MB minimum that VMware recommends is a joke, but that's b/c you can't devote enough RAM to a VM for a current OS- not because of stability.

Until I got more RAM for my laptop, I ran 4 Linux VMs on 512MB for a while. It started swapping on the 2nd VM, and I couldn't run 3 (256MB) VM's concurrently, but it was perfectly stable.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: ColKurtz

Originally posted by: JackMDS
Runing any of the Virtuals with less then 1GB RAM is really not very stable.

I'm going to have to disagree with that statement. Although more RAM is almost always better when dealing with VMware, there are no stability issues when running less than 1GB. The 128MB minimum that VMware recommends is a joke, but that's b/c you can't devote enough RAM to a VM for a current OS- not because of stability.

Until I got more RAM for my laptop, I ran 4 Linux VMs on 512MB for a while. It started swapping on the 2nd VM, and I couldn't run 3 (256MB) VM's concurrently, but it was perfectly stable.

Yeah, that is not correct at all unless you have crappy RAM (and then you're going to have stability problems no matter what you do). I ran VMWare back when I had 512MB of RAM, though with only one VM (with 256MB allocated), and had no issues, other than too much swap file access to be comfortable on the parts of both the host and guest. With 1GB, I can have two 256MB VMs while still leaving 512MB to the host, and have no noticeable swapping.

Running VMWare on 256MB is going to be terribly painful. Your time waiting for the guest OS to boot, and then the host OS to reload itself from the disk after you shut down the guest, will cost you more than a RAM upgrade.