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Would this laptop be a decent VM host?

V

VinylxScratches

Golden Member
I am looking into making a server laptop for using my OSs that I have. I want to run multiple instances of Microsoft Virtual PC along with Visual Studio for development.

I found this deal - http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16834101180

Pentium Dual Core 2.16, 2GB of ram, and a 250 gigabyte hard drive. I will upgrade the ram to 4GB.

I will be running Vista Business 64 bit as the host. I want to run 2x Windows Server 2003, and 2x Windows Server 2008. Each one will probably have 384 megs of ram devoted to it.

I know this is more of a hardware question but I think the topic fits here better.

I am also wondering it can handle such a load. If the fans are gonna be on blast 24/7 since this laptop will be on all the time.


My current idea is a Mac Mini using Windows Vista.
 
To me it seems like you should dedicate at least 768 MB or Ram to each VM.. 384 seems way too low. ideally they should have 1 GB each.
 
Definately not enough memory for those vm's. Get a laptop that will support 8gig, then give each 768-1gig each.

Bill
 
Memory would need to be needed, plus the cpu is going to limit it a bit too as its limited to a 533fsb, so you might have some stuttering or not quite as fast response time
 
The "rule" for "production use", to have the same number of CPU cores and memory as you'd use for all the machines separately. Remember, though, that laptops are almost never as efficient as desktop PCs.

If you won't be running all the VMs all the time and if performance isn't important, then you can start cutting back. I've run two Server 2003s and one XP client on an XP/Virtual PC box with 1.0 GB of memory. Things were pretty slow, but those VMs didn't need to do anything useful.

I don't know how low you can go and still get a usable Server 2008, and Visual Studio. Considering that many consider 2 GB of RAM to be the minimum just for Vista, 2 GB sounds pretty low.
 
I ended up buying a Mac Mini. I will be upgrading the ram to 4 gigs even though 3.3 is the best it can do. I think I may just run Windows XP Pro/Vista Business 64, Visual Studio, then an instance of 2003 and 2008 along with maybe a NetBSD for UNIX stuff. I'll mess around with it first.

Thanks everyone.
 
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