VPC Hardware

hennessy1

Golden Member
Mar 18, 2007
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I am not inclined to MS VPC but I am familiar with it. My question is what hardware would best speed up a virtual machine. Faster hard drive where the vm's would reside, faster cpu(quad), more or faster memory(givin there is already 8gb of 800mhz ram installed). If I am heading in the wrong direction with this please feel free to correct.
 

JasonCoder

Golden Member
Feb 23, 2005
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Definitely have the disk where the VPC files reside NOT be the same as the drive where your host OS resides. In my case I have a raptor for OS and a baracuda for most everything else - VPC images included.

The memory is really just a barrier on how many you want to run simultaneously. I have run four VPCs simulating an Exchange dev network of tiered servers on 4 gig of ram.

All the latest CPUs supposedly have hardware level virtualization support but whether that really helps I've never noticed.
 

JackMDS

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 25, 1999
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VPC emulate old Intel BX Chipset, and S3 graphic card. I.e. Certain things are slow by definition.

As said above put the VPC itself on C:\ and put the VHD on another fast drive (Not a second partition).

The memory allocated to the VPC per-se is important, if you need speed when setting the Virtual computer you should allocate much more than the default memory.

Otherwise the more everything else is fast the more the VPC is fast. The only thing that is Not crucial is the Video card since from the VPC point of view it is always S3.

The new VPC, aka Hyper-V that comes with Windows server 2008 is different. It needs x64 capable computer and the emulation is synthetic.

Want to try it, download this and install it on a 64 bit own computer.
This is Not an add on it actually Windows server 2008 that was trimmed just to support Hyper-V.

It has to be installed on its own computer once it is installed you a Virtual capable machine that run as virtual almost all of Windows clients OS? as well as major Penguins.

And best of all it is currently Free, http://www.microsoft.com/downl...699C3A0&displaylang=en

P.S. That means that if One have an old 939 keep it. Since most of the 939 CPUs are x64 it can be used as a Virtual Computer Rig.

Note. While the Hyper-V is free, every OS installed as virtual Computer on top of it might need Lic. and in some cases activation just like any other type of OS installation.
 

hennessy1

Golden Member
Mar 18, 2007
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Thank you guys for the replies. I usually allocate 2gb of memory per vm. The cpu in use would be a q6600. I am leaning towards a velicorapter.