Upgrading Machine for VMWare Player

TheEmperor

Hi -

I want to make some minor upgrades to my PC so I can run different virtual machines on it faster. I use VMWare Player for Kali Linux and Windows 7 and they are sluggish when running them both concurrently (host is Windows 7 Pro 64-bit). Here are the current specs:

Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
1TB HDD
16GB RAM
i7- processor

I'm thinking of getting the Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB SSD, Will this upgrade help with the performance? If not, what can I do?

Thank you in advance.

wd40

I have a
Core i7 4770k
16 GB Ram
and a Samsung 850 evo 1TB

Before that I had a normal WD Black 500 GB HDD.

VM's are smooth (I am using VirtualBox), just give them 4GB of RAM each if you want and let VirtualBox manage the actual RAM used by each.

I do not think that the price difference for the Samsung PRO is worth the performance deference.

I noticed something with Kali, Mouse scroll is not very smooth.

CagePotan

Here are the system requirements for VMware Player:

CPU
a 64-bit x86 CPU
1.3GHz or faster core speed
LAHF/SAHF support in long mode

For 64-bit guest operating systems, the host system must have one of the following processors:
an AMD CPU that has segment-limit support in long mode
an Intel CPU that has VT-x support

Memory
1GB minimum, 2GB and above is recommended
if you want to use Windows 7 Aero graphics in a virtual machine, 3GB of host system memory is required.

Hard disk
IDE, SATA, and SCSI hard drives are supported
a minimum of 1GB free disk space is recommended for each guest operating system
Optical CD-ROM and DVD

IDE, SCSI, and SATA optical drives are supported
CD-ROM and DVD drives are supported
ISO disk image files are supported

Network
any Ethernet controller that the host operating system supports.

The hard disk is usually the problem when VMs are running slow, so the SSD drive will certainly make a difference.

VMware Player system requirements

InfoTech92

I have an I7 4790K, 16gb of RAM, and put my VMs on a 1TB WD Blue. Everything runs awesome. How much RAM are you giving each?

srabiee

Have you concluded through troubleshooting/monitoring that it's a disk IOPS issue?

cyberguypr

I am also curious as to what empirical data the OP has to determine storage is the bottle neck. I have a similar spec'ed host in my home lab and run multiple VMs with no issues.

CagePotan

I have a lab with five VMs and even an ESXi installation that contain additional VMs. When I switched from HDD to SSD the performance benefit was enormous.

Swift6

Your memory and CPU can chew up two VMs easy.
What spec is your HDD? i.e. rpm, SAS, SATA.

An SSD should certainly provide a noticeable difference.