Assign virtual cores and processors to virtual machine using VMware

[mrchow19910319]

I am fairly new to this. 

To put it in the simplest way, I have a i7 4 core 8 thread laptop. 

Can I allocate 4 cores 8 threads to my virtual machine? 

I am creating this linux VM on an external SSD where I want to do some web development on it.

Is it doable?? 

 

So, the 1st slot means number of cores? where the second means how many threads does one core have in my laptop? 

Is this correct ??? 

[HanZie82]

1 minute ago, mrchow19910319 said:

So, the 1st slot means number of cores? where the second means how many threads does one core have in my laptop? 

Is this correct ??? 

I think with Processors it means actual CPU's, so you set that to 1.

Then for cores you set it to however many you want the VM to use.

You can choose to put 8 PCU's in to test server software?

[mrchow19910319]

1 minute ago, HanZie82 said:

I think with Processors it means actual CPU's, so you set that to 1.

Then for cores you set it to however many you want the VM to use.

You can choose to put 8 PCU's in to test server software?

VMware 16 Pro support up to 32 processor and 32 cores per processor.

So if I want to use all the threads I will put 1 and 8 in the form?? 

[HanZie82]

Just now, mrchow19910319 said:

So if I want to use all the threads I will put 1 and 8 in the form?? 

Yes, i dont think VM cares for hyperthreading  so they will just name/see it as cores.

1 minute ago, mrchow19910319 said:

VMware 16 Pro support up to 32 processor and 32 cores per processor.

Oh damn, thats a lot.

But then there's 128 core CPU's too.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, mrchow19910319 said:

So, the 1st slot means number of cores

The first slot is the number of physical processors. Leave this to 1.

1 hour ago, mrchow19910319 said:

the second means how many threads does one core have in my laptop? 

The second slot refers to how many logical cores each processor has. Set this to 8.

[JOH451]

My understanding is that the number of processors and cores is purely for hardware reporting in the guest machine. The key figure is the total processor cores figure at the bottom. This is the number of threads that you are allocating to the guest machine.

 

So you could have 1 processor, 8 cores or 2 processors, 4 cores or 4 processors, 2 cores. The result will still be all 8 threads being allocated to the guest machine. The fact that your laptop has 1 processor, 4 cores and 2 threads per core is irrelevant.

 

Don't do it. 

 

Your laptop has 8 threads and you really don't want to allocate them all to one or more guest machines. The reason is that you still need to run the host operating system and if you are using Windows then a virus checker as well. You can assume they will need at least two threads if you don't want the system to grind to a halt.

 

You haven't given much indication of the nature of the guest machine. Therefore I can only give general advice. Start with a small guest machine and enlarge it as necessary. The default settings for a particular operating system are a good starting point. If you are going to increase something from the defaults then I would say it should be the memory. Upping the number of cores I would be more constrained about.

 

Once you have the guest operating system installed then make sure to install VMware Tools immediately if you want anything like normal graphics performance. Even then expect it to be poor but better than without. That is the nature of virtual machines I am afraid.

 

Good luck.

[mrchow19910319]

5 hours ago, JOH451 said:

 

Thanks for the in-depth explanation. I want to use the guest OS to do simple programming and give Xubuntu a try. I love to customize it and install VScode on it and do web development. I think it is a bit tough to do actual programming on a guest machine especially my host machine is not that powerful. At least I can install linux on it and have some fun customizing the DM and such. 

[mrchow19910319]

@JOH451 I run Ubuntu 20.04 using VirtualBOX just fine on my machine. Given the fact that I did install the extension pack from VirtualBOX.