Virtual lab for 680

Hello,

This thread might be misplaced, but I want to know is what the minimum (memory) requirements to run Windows 7 are? I currently have 4 GB of Ram, but I am running Vista Ultimate 32-bit, and therefore can only utilise 3GB. This poses a problem, because Vista takes about 1GB, and my two virtual Win 7 machines take 1GB each.

But I have recently given only 768MB each to the Win 7 machines, and they still seem to run. Which kind of contradicts the minimum Ram requirements listed by MS, because according to MS I need atleast 1GB to run Win 7. Perhaps I can even lower the Ram to 512MB each on those two virtual Win 7 machines, and get away witrh it?
Of course another solution is to install a 64-bit Os, and fully utilise all of the RAM I have. But I am thinking of building a new pc soon anyway (which will have 12GB of RAM), so I can have a virtual lab of Win Server 2008 and win 7 machines, and therefore I'm not really motivated to do that.

Has anyone tried to run Win 7 on only 512MB? What was the experience like? Of course we don't really need more than the minimum required memory for a lab pc, so if it works, then why not.

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Comments

RobertKaucher

Dracula28 wrote: »

Of course we don't really need more than the minimum required memory for a lab pc, so if it works, then why not.

My thoughts exactly. I would say do it and let the forum know your results. Someone has to be first!

I would also suggest you invest some $ in a larger system you can install and run Hyper-V on. A quad core system with 8GB of RAM would not cost too much and you could run 6 VMs with 1 GB of RAM each on it easily. Just a suggestion.

Dracula28

Thanks for the suggestion.

Well I've been expermienting a little, and I got Win 7 (Ultimate) to start with even only 128 MB of ram. Then it was utilising about 120 MB of it when idle. If I give it 256 MB then it utilises about 180 MB. If I give it 1 GB, then it utilises about 250 MB when idle.

So I think it should run just fine with 512MB. And I think I really only need 2 lab pcs for the 680 exam, so I need not worry atleast for this exam.

skrpune

I got good performance using 512, and better with 768. You should be fine.

Fugazi1000

Don't forget MS gives the spec of a machine that also needs to run applications. Doing Labs won't generally tax a machine like the real world.

Psoasman

I set up a Windows 7 64-bit at work running on 1 GB of RAM. It works fairly well as long as you aren't doing anything too processor intensive. It will start with 512 MB, but not well.
512 will barely get Vista's attention.

pollerunner

Remember that w7 minimum memory demand are 512MB for installation to work. The installer needs this. It is the same for vista and ws08 as weel. I always run my virtual machines with this amount. And they work well for as long that there are not installed applications. So that you can run it with less memory is only after installation. MS learning runs their ws08 with 368 mb after installation