Virtualization introduction please :)

[ion529]

Never done this before, all I know is I can run three machines on one machine so lets do it. What are the requirements for 3 VMs running a single machine? (They will be doing extremely minimal work)

[leadeater]

For hardware requirements this is solely based on what you want to run, the OS and the application. The next thing you need to do is pick the virtualization tool. There are many and everyone will have a personal preference, mine is VMware.

 

Are you going to do this on dedicated hardware or run on your existing desktop? If on your desktop you can just use Hyper-V, the downside to this is of course cpu/ram load and how that may effect gaming performance and if the VMs need to be powered on all the time then so will your desktop.

 

The technically better option is to use dedicated hardware for the VMs.

 

What are your VMs for/what will they be doing. If it is nothing major and does not require 24/7 operation the most cost effective thing to do is to use or upgrade what you already have and power the VMs on as needed.

[icey]

There's an easy answer to your question. Let's say you intend on running VMware with 3 Virtual Machines, you're going to need to allocate those VM's resources. So, say you want equal performance from all VM's you'll need to evenly assign each VM an equal number of CPU cores. You'll need to do the same with RAM etc.

 

Looking at your hardware in your signature, you're going to stuggle to run more than 1 VM with VMware doing anything more than word processing and browsing. Normally for any more than 1 VM you'll want a processor for the job and depending on what you're doing, plenty of RAM. Your FX5800K simply isn't designed for the job. I personally use XEON processors when doing anything where more than 1 VM is required. Stability is key.

 

[icey]

If you need any more advise I've worked with a tonne of VMware servers so PM me any questions in the future if you wish.

 

Cheers

[Mark77]

When I first got into virtualization, I had an AthlonXP 2500+, and I ran an XP and a Linux VM.  The virtualizer was Virtualbox.  The AMD CPU didn't even have any virtualization extensions.

 

It ran.  Not that well.  But it ran.  MS-Windows VMs tend to be dramatically more resource hungry than Linux VMs.