vmware workstation for labs

For those of you who use vmware workstation to run your labs, what kind of limitations have you run in to? How's the performance? How many VMs have you managed to have running simultaneously? Platform is Windows 7. Thanks for your tips!

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msteinhilber

I've had over a dozen VM's running on my workstation at home in it's previous config (i7 920, 12gb ram, raid 10 for vm storage) and it has been fine. Didn't really run into any major limitations, though a few of the VM's were relatively small virtual routers (Vyatta) for the lab simulation.

I have a need lately to run a lot more, many relatively small, so I'm putting together a new server to dedicate to ESXi and free up my main workstation for fun and games now and then without having to suspend my virtual lab all the time and to be able to simulate a larger portion of the environment I need to proof of concept. But I would say for just about any form of training need most people here would have - a halfway decent desktop would do fine. Just get a bunch of memory since it's relatively cheap, that seems to be the first thing I always run out of as I'm never really pushing the CPU usage much in my lab vm's at all.

Devilsbane

I've never had limitations on my laptop. I give each computer 512 of RAM, and I have run 4 or 5 servers with 2 or 3 workstations at the same time with no issues.

My laptop has an i7 and 8GB of RAM. You could easily cut the workstations down to 256MB (they don't really have anything running on them. Just do gpupdates and such) and maybe the servers too if I had to with no major implications.

EDIT: This is 2003 servers and XP machines.

earweed

As long as you have enough RAM you shouldn't have a problem. I had only 2 GB and was limited to running 2 VMs and they ran really slow. Also if you're trying to run R2 then your processor needs to have VT.

za3bour

I have 4 GB of memory and i3 2.2 I'm running 4 machines at same time (3 server and one 7) with no problems at all.

ehnde

earweed wrote: »

As long as you have enough RAM you shouldn't have a problem. I had only 2 GB and was limited to running 2 VMs and they ran really slow. Also if you're trying to run R2 then your processor needs to have VT.

I'm having trouble running more than one instance at a time of Windows Server 2008 R2 with 2gb of ram. Just bought 4gb of ram off of ebay for a total of 6...hopefully that helps! I've seen other people say they can get something like 20 VMs running with 12gb of ram, so if I can get 6 VMs running on 6gb I'll be ok with that.

earweed

That was 2 regular server 2008 VMs and they ran really slow.

ehnde

Holy cow! That has me worried

....I'll just run these labs and see how far I can get before the computer gets mind numbingly slow. VMWare workstation might not be good enough, though.

earweed

Get more RAM and you'll be ok. I got some reading done anytime I had to actually do anything with my VMs back then..haha

azjag

I have 3-4 VM's running on my work PC. Mostly image testing and a sandbox for apps. I've been dabbling with the vmware studio and that is what I use workstation for now. Work PC is an i5 with 4gb ram.