Optimum Virtual Machine workstation

**craig1** · 3 August 2011, 13:01

If I had to build that, I'd seriously consider a Mac Pro running VMWare Fusion. That said, I'd wait until later this month when the model refresh is due.

**PAH** · 3 August 2011, 13:11

Nah, I don't do Macs, or Linux. Already have W7 x64 so going to upgrade my PC to a quad core, 16gb, dual SSD mofo for under 500 quid.

Not so keen on VMWare. Tried the free version a few years ago and it was sluggish. Don't want all my resources hogged by the VM software.

If VirtualBox isn't good enough I may try Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (free to download and use) which also operates as the host O/S. Not sure I need each VM to be running as a server though, so hopefully a workstation approach will suffice.

**craig1** · 3 August 2011, 13:25

Originally posted by PAH View Post

Nah, I don't do Macs, or Linux. Already have W7 x64 so going to upgrade my PC to a quad core, 16gb, dual SSD mofo for under 500 quid.

Not so keen on VMWare. Tried the free version a few years ago and it was sluggish. Don't want all my resources hogged by the VM software.

If VirtualBox isn't good enough I may try Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (free to download and use) which also operates as the host O/S. Not sure I need each VM to be running as a server though, so hopefully a workstation approach will suffice.

Fair enough, it's just the extra grunt of the Xeons and the high performance of the workstation that I like in the Mac Pro. The way it works is perfectly robust enough for running multiple VMs without the memory hogging you get with Microsoft Hyper-V on a Microsoft OS. Plus I know that it's a far more robust OS that I can leave running nearly permanently. Win7 is a huge improvement for Microsoft but it's still years behind Mac OSX as a desktop OS in terms of robustness.

The latest VMWare Fusion is a fantastic bit of kit but it's user preference over Parallels.

**Pondlife** · 3 August 2011, 14:02

Very happy with Virtualbox mainly due to its cost.

I run 3 VMs on a win7 machine.
1. Ubuntu for surfing
2. another ubuntu as a copy of my webserver and ftp/ssh box and general technical masturbation
3. erm... .net IDES system

Best thing is I can copy them all on to an external drive an use them on my MBP.

**doodab** · 3 August 2011, 14:36

Originally posted by PAH View Post

Building a new PC as soon as the components arrive. Thinking of segregating common tasks into virtual machines so I can easily rebuild or replace a VM for new or alternative versions of software without filling my main O/S with junk.

Also makes backing up as easy as copying the VM image to the backup device.

Going to give VirtualBox a try, hosted in Windows 7 64bit.

Currently thinking of having the following virtual machines:

1. Dev (Visual Studio, SQL Server, source control, etc)

2. Video Conversion (tools used to rip my DVDs to my NAS and convert to h.264 or iPod size)

3. Browser sandboxes (isolated browsing in case any compromised websites accessed. This will be riddled with anti-virus and ant-malware software.)

4. Test sandbox (for testing new software before installing in a more permanent VM, to avoid cluttering the main VMs)

Anyone done similar and have any recommendations or ideas for the ideal workstation?

Yes, I do much the same thing, usually I make a VM per client + a seperate dev machine for Java & Visual Studio and various other ones for different OS & database versions and so on.

An "ideal" workstation needs enough memory to fit all live machines into physical RAM and a disk subsystem with plentiful IO throughput. I used to use 4 x SATA drives in RAID10 with an LSI adapter, now I use SSD for "live" machines. For the CPU, it depends on how many machines you are running at once, how many cores you configure per VM and if your workload will make use of the cores. I am still on a Core 2 Duo + have most machines configured with 2 cores but I rarely have to run more than one at once. So your suggested spec sounds fine, with the caveat that with 2 x SSD you probably don't want to use RAID as it will disable support for the TRIM command.

I'm surprised you find VMWare sluggish, I use Workstation and I find using most guests comparable to using a native OS. You do need to allocate enough memory to VMWare, and set it to use physical RAM, use independent / persistent disks if you can, keep the VMWare tools up to date and switch on the accelerated video drivers and so on but I find it flies along. It might be worth having a look at VMWare Player, which is free and now allows you to create VMs.

**Sysman** · 3 August 2011, 14:50

Originally posted by PAH View Post

Not so keen on VMWare. Tried the free version a few years ago and it was sluggish. Don't want all my resources hogged by the VM software.

I almost bought VMware Workstation earlier this year, but I too found it sluggish.

Originally posted by PAH View Post

If VirtualBox isn't good enough I may try Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (free to download and use) which also operates as the host O/S. Not sure I need each VM to be running as a server though, so hopefully a workstation approach will suffice.

I tried that and couldn't get it working. I think it was preconfigured for hardware I don't have (e.g. Intel versus AMD).

**PAH** · 3 August 2011, 15:30

Maybe VMWare was sluggish for me due to my soon to be upgraded PC only having 2gb ram (mobo limit

), so may give it another go if I'm not happy with VirtualBox.

I figure 16gb ram will be enough for multiple VMs running simultanously, each having 2 to 4gb ram allocated. Probably won't be running them all together anyway, but nice if they will!

Not going to raid the SSDs, but may try two VMs per SSD and see how the I/O copes.

Will try running the smaller sandbox VMs from a ramdisk loaded from a large traditional hard drive I'll use as colder storage. If a ramdisk is too limited in size I'll just bang in another SSD or two!

Would go to 32gb (Sandy Bridge limit until quad channel Sandy Bridge-E comes out later in year) for a truly usable ramdisk size if the 8gb sticks were as relatively cheap as 4gb sticks currently are.

**Sysman** · 4 August 2011, 13:19

Originally posted by PAH View Post

Maybe VMWare was sluggish for me due to my soon to be upgraded PC only having 2gb ram (mobo limit

), so may give it another go if I'm not happy with VirtualBox.

I figure 16gb ram will be enough for multiple VMs running simultanously, each having 2 to 4gb ram allocated. Probably won't be running them all together anyway, but nice if they will

In a post earlier this year I mentioned that I could see VMware creating pagefiles for each virtual machine. This is how VMware can host more VM RAM than is physically available, but even with only one VM running I could see a lot of activity on these. I got sick of seeing the disk activity LED solidly on for extended periods of time.

I think it was doodab who told me that those pagefiles could be switched off (damn, that advice came too late for my trial period).

Once you get your shiny new upgrade, try out VirtuaBox then grab a 30 day trial of VMware Workstation and see how it compares.

A warning about Hyper-V. When I tried it under Server 2008, it trod on VirtualBox and uninstalling it was the only way to get VBox working again.

**Durbs** · 4 August 2011, 14:06

I use an ML115 running Win 2K8 server with lots of RAM - use VMWare Player on it. works nicely.

You can pick ML115's up real cheap if you shop around and they are solid machines. they run a dual core Opteron which isn't the quickest processor, but I found the memory was the bottleneck anyway so ramping that up meant i've never had any issues with a virtual machine not performing as it should.

Optimum Virtual Machine workstation