Observations on my VMWare Environment for Certs

Wanted to post some of the things I'm facing as I go forward on http://www.techexams.net/forums/70-270-windows-xp-professional/45165-jockvsjocks-path-70-270-cert.html

I'm running the following:
-Ubuntu 8.04 w/3 GB of RAM and about 8 GB of swap space
-VMWare 1.0.6

Windows Server 2003 Enterprise runs very slow. I have allocated 4 GB to it and close to 4 GB of RAM. Was wondering if all servers running in VMWare run this slow and if there are any recommended settings to run a server in VMWare.

I am not able to see a usb thumbdrive that is mounted ok in Ubuntu, however not able to see it in the VMWare environment. Not sure what type of change/setting has to be made in order to see this.

Deleting old VMWare OS that I am no longer using. Didn't find an easy way to do this, so I had to go in by the command line to delete these. Was wondering what others have done under Linux/Ubuntu to clean up.

thanks

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tiersten

If you're allocating more than the actual available physical RAM available in your machine to a VM then you're going to get terrible performance.

Any reason why you're using VMware Server v1?

msteinhilber

I only assign 512MB memory for 2003 VM's and they run flawless. Reduce the memory allocation, and I always allocate all of the disk space rather than allowing the vhd's to grow as well. Since you're running Ubuntu, snag the VMware Server 2 Tarball and install that - it might solve your USB issue, I found VMware Server 1 when I was using it a while back to be finicky with USB devices. VMware Server 2 also performs better which might help you out as well.

JockVSJock

Thanks for the input.

My question is, for running a server in VMWare (either Windows or Linux), what would the recommendation of hard disk Vs memory be?

The reason I'm running v1 for VMWare, is that it seemed to work ok for me when I fooled around with it previously, so I stuck with what I knew worked.

I may try v2.

thanks

msteinhilber wrote: »

I only assign 512MB memory for 2003 VM's and they run flawless. Reduce the memory allocation, and I always allocate all of the disk space rather than allowing the vhd's to grow as well. Since you're running Ubuntu, snag the VMware Server 2 Tarball and install that - it might solve your USB issue, I found VMware Server 1 when I was using it a while back to be finicky with USB devices. VMware Server 2 also performs better which might help you out as well.

msteinhilber

It depends on what you plan to install in your VM. For my training labs I gave them 8GB each just in case, that was more than I needed but I was on the high end just in case I had a need for more space. If I was going to test a particular program or configuration for work I would scale the hard drive size accordingly as needed.

JockVSJock

What about clients? For example, I have two XP pro clients and have given them 2 GB HD space and about 1024 RAM. They run pretty quick.

I'm using the clients just for my MCSA labs.

thanks

msteinhilber wrote: »

It depends on what you plan to install in your VM. For my training labs I gave them 8GB each just in case, that was more than I needed but I was on the high end just in case I had a need for more space. If I was going to test a particular program or configuration for work I would scale the hard drive size accordingly as needed.

msteinhilber

Clients I would give 256MB memory, the key with using VMware on a workstation/notebook for training purposes isn't all out performance. You'll run out of memory quickly if you give your VM's memory amounts as if you were building physical machines for real use.

On my old notebook (Lenovo T60p with 3gb ram) I often had 2-4 Server 2003 guests running and a couple clients running. Allocated 512MB ram to the servers since that's where I did the bulk of my labs and just 256MB to the clients. They weren't blazingly fast, but they weren't at all what I would consider unacceptable considering I was able to carry a full lab environment anywhere.