Virtual Server / VMware

Sie

Morning Guys,

Does anyone know if VMWare or Virtual Server supports multiple CPU's?

Looking at purchasing a laptop to run labs on (main PC has been taken over as the home PC - internet / email etc) and was wondering the advantage of Dual Core CPU's.

Thou another idea I have just had is to get a cheap laptop for the email / kids games though I think im due a more up-to-date machine anyway.

paintb4707

Sie wrote:

Morning Guys,

Does anyone know if VMWare or Virtual Server supports multiple CPU's?

Looking at purchasing a laptop to run labs on (main PC has been taken over as the home PC - internet / email etc) and was wondering the advantage of Dual Core CPU's.

Thou another idea I have just had is to get a cheap laptop for the email / kids games though I think im due a more up-to-date machine anyway.

Never used virtual server but VMWare Workstation does.

It's not so much the CPU usage though, its the RAM and hard disk space. Figure you run Server 2k3 and Win XP pro, you have to allocate at least 256mb ram to both of them, leaving you with 512 for the host OS (assuming that you get 1 gig). Then disk space is a factor is a factor as well... because you need at least 5 gigs per virtual machine so that you can play around with different software. Maybe more than that.

dynamik

I agree. RAM is much more important than CPU.

Check out this link for a good overview of VMWare Workstation 6.

http://www.linux.com/feature/114368

From the article:

linux.com wrote:

The host distributions I used for Workstation ran on a dual-core Intel machine with 2GB RAM, a Celeron 1.5GHz Acer laptop with 1GB RAM, a Celeron 1.4GHz IBM laptop with 1.25GB RAM, and a Pentium 4 1.7GHz desktop with 768MB RAM. If you want to use Workstation productively, make sure you have at least 1GB of RAM. On my machines, Workstation was much smoother on the slower Celeron laptops with 1GB or more RAM than on the powerful P4 desktop with less RAM.

If you can afford it, I'd get a copy of VMWare workstation over Virtual PC. Version 6 has some really nice features. Also, you can go even a little more conservative with the RAM. The minimum for XP is 64mb and the minimum for Server 2003 is 128mb. If you go with 128 and 192, respectively, you should be fine for anything you're doing in a lab. I can get 4-5 machines running on my 1.6ghz Pentium M/1gb laptop.

I'd still get as good of system as you could. You can pick up a decent core2duo/2gb ram system without causing your wallet too much trauma.

Sie

Thanks for your replies.

I have Workstation 5 so I guess thats fine for multiple CPU's.

Know about the RAM already and thats the main thing im looking for in the machine was just wondering if dual cores etc were worth it, cause if they were not supported there wouldnt be any point!!

Cheers again.

blargoe

Virtual Server will run on hosts with multiple CPU's but the VM's themselves can only have one CPU Core. VMWare does not have this restriction.