64bit Linux the best OS for VM networks?

Tittle pretty much says it all. Is Linux the best host OS for setting up a VM network? With 4 GBs of ram installed on the machine. After getting nothing but crickets on the MCSE forum I decided to ask here.

http://www.techexams.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=31786

Some pros and cons I see in this:

XP is a obvious choice, but most editions being 32 bit you're throwing away 1 GB of ram with 4 GBs of ram installed a machine.

XP 64, I believe its hard to come by drivers for the 64 bit version of XP but I could be wrong.

Vista 32 bit has the same drawback as XP 32 bit.

Vista 64 seems like a prime candidate but with all the background caching may be causing problems with getting enough ram to the network machines.

Linux seems like the best choice with 64 bit versions and more (supposedly) efficient swap partition compared to virtual memory.

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Comments

blargoe

I agree for the reasons you already stated and because you can strip away a bunch of the OS overhead unlike Windows. You can install exactly what is required to run VMWare and nothing else if you want.

RTmarc

A lot of it depends on how much RAM you intend to allocate to your VMs. I run 64bit Vista on my laptop with 4GBs of RAM and I can run two or three at the same time with no issues but I also tend to add more RAM than probably necessary.

What are your goals with your VMs? Testing? Production?

Mishra

Linux 64bit VMware blows away any 32bit Windows installation I've seen. It's amazing the speed difference between the 2 platforms in relation to VMware. Because I don't trust any 64bit Windows OS until 2008 is out for 1-3 years, then I would go with Linux.

dynamik

It depends on your needs and your budget. A few things you might want to consider:

A lot of the driver issues you hear about for 64-bit versions of Windows are for peripherals, such as printers, web cams, etc. I don't think it's too likely that you'll encounter problems setting a machine up to use VMs. You may run into other problems if you want to use it for other things though.

3.25gb or whatever with 32-bit client OSes is enough to get a lot of VMs running. For example, you can have 10 @ 256mb, and still leave plenty for the OS and other apps. If you want to do other things, such as game, this might be your best bet.

Linux is free and can be configured to be much less resource-intensive than Windows. If you're using this machine as a dedicated VM server, there's really not any reason to not go this route.

Mishra: I don't use any 64-bit versions of XP or Vista, but Server 2003 is pretty solid. It's also the only RTM product that will currently run Exchange 2007.

Mishra

dynamik wrote:

Mishra: I don't use any 64-bit versions of XP or Vista, but Server 2003 is pretty solid. It's also the only RTM product that will currently run Exchange 2007.

I just never got the greatest feeling from Microsoft when it comes to patching their 64-bit OS's (Vista is the exception). It seemed like they threw out the 64-bit OS's only because the public demanded them and they went on to their "next-gen" systems. Coupled with those feelings and the crazy problems I've seen with 64-bit Windows and other products (SQL 2005, another product I can't remember) I just decided to stick with 32-bit until Server 2008.

JDMurray

I believe that 8GB is the max amount of RAM you can allocate in VMWare Workstation, so you'd need a 64-bit OS to make use of it. If you don't want to shell out the $$$ for Windows XP x64 then you're pretty much stuck with a 64-bit distro of Linux.

Thiassi

Just to add that I think 64 bit linux is excellent for VM's as well. I am REALLY impressed with 64 bit Vista though.

I ordered a new PC recently to use for VM'ing: Vista 64, 8gb RAM 150gb 10k rpm HDD and a quad core Q6600 (although VMware Workstation only supports 2 cores currently).

I've seen 8gb of DDR2 being sold for £110 (~$200 & OCZ RAM as well). You can never have too much RAM.

The machine is superb and I've had next to no driver problems. I presume this is because MS now require 64 bit drivers, as well as 32 bit, from devs in order to sign them.