Will an external SSD drive be fast enough for the VHD's?

I want to practice doing some virtualization at work but I would need to bring my laptop. I have a 64GB SSD that I can put on an external enclosure, if I keep all my vhds on there and run virtualbox on my laptop, will it be fast enough to do it decently well? I would need to run Windows server 2008 R2 since I'm practicing for my MCITP. My laptop's cpu is a SP9300 and unfortunately I only have 2GB's of ram.
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The 2GB RAM will limit you, but you can try installing VMs one at a time with 1GB RAM, then downgrading them to around 256MB to see how many you can run concurrently. With regular disks, a VM running 2008 R2 is unusable with that little RAM because the drive can't handle the heavy disk swapping that results from insufficient RAM. However, an SSD can handle a lot of I/O, so while performance won't be great, it should still be usable. To save further RAM, enable Page Fusion for the VMs.
64GB is not a lot of disk space, especially for the disk hogging 2008 R2. I suggest reading up on VirtualBox's linked-clone functionality, which they call "immutable images". Create one VM, install 2008 R2 on it with whatever base software you need (if any), sysprep it, then delete the VM (and not the disk, obviously) and mark the disk as immutable. An immutable disk is read-only and you can create and run multiple VMs that share the disk (changes go to a differencing disk unique to the VM).
Chapter 5. Virtual storage
With 2008 R2, the immutable image might be about 10GB, with a 4-6GB differencing disk per VM, giving you plenty of room for VMs with a 64GB disk. If you just use standalone disks, each VM will be 14-16GB, so 64GB won't be much at all. You can also compact disks in VirtualBox... see this thread:
Shrinking VDI file with NTFS partition (View topic) • virtualbox.org
For maximum disk savings, do the compact procedure after sysprepping the VM and shutting it down, but before setting the disk as immutable. So after the sysprep, boot the VM to a Windows live CD, run sdelete (per thread above), shut it down, delete the VM (only), compact the disk, and set it as immutable.
MCSA 2003, LFCS, LFCE (expired), VCP6-DCV
SSC1, SST1, AXV1, TTV1, ABV1, TNV1, AHV1, BAC1, BBC1, LAE1, LUT1, GAC1, IWC1, INC1, HHT1, LAT1, QLT1, CLC1, IWT1 TPV1, INT1, TSV1, LET1, BOV1, AJV1, ORC1, MGC1, BRV1, AIV1, WFV1, TWA1, CPW2
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SSC1, SST1, AXV1, TTV1, ABV1, TNV1, AHV1, BAC1, BBC1, LAE1, LUT1, GAC1, IWC1, INC1, HHT1, LAT1, QLT1, CLC1, IWT1 TPV1, INT1, TSV1, LET1, BOV1, AJV1, ORC1, MGC1, BRV1, AIV1, WFV1, TWA1, CPW2
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I see, that makes sense
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There is little chance of a recent consumer SSD being burnt out before the warranty is up, unless you are running high-utilization production VMs 24/7 (in which case buy an enterprise SSD with SLC flash). They have advanced wear leveling functionality, and even if blocks go bad there are enough reserved blocks to replace them. As for performance, with current consumer SSDs, write performance is fantastic and on par with reads.
Bench - SSD - AnandTech
SSDs support SMART and you can monitor the status of them. The one in my laptop is at 2400 hours of power on time, 1TB of writes and 1.6TB reads, and the "health" as reported by utilities such as CrystalDiskInfo is still near where it was when new. I make heavy use of VMs on this machine, and there has been no perceptible performance degradation thus far.
MCSA 2003, LFCS, LFCE (expired), VCP6-DCV
SSC1, SST1, AXV1, TTV1, ABV1, TNV1, AHV1, BAC1, BBC1, LAE1, LUT1, GAC1, IWC1, INC1, HHT1, LAT1, QLT1, CLC1, IWT1 TPV1, INT1, TSV1, LET1, BOV1, AJV1, ORC1, MGC1, BRV1, AIV1, WFV1, TWA1, CPW2
Incompleted Courses:
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Anyway, this is just an academic argument. DDR prices are suppose to be falling sharply this year, and unless you need a single computer with hundreds of GB of cheap RAM, there's no reason to consider the possibility of using an SSD for main memory.
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http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?sduid=30903&t=2692935
great deal
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I remember back in early 2009 I got several 8GB DDR2 kits for $100, man those were the days!
MCSA 2003, LFCS, LFCE (expired), VCP6-DCV