Best Processor For Virtual PC's

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Flowerhat

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Hello everyone,

I would like to ask for your advice on virtual machines.
What type of software have you used to create virtual machines.

What is the most cost effective processor to get if I wanted to create around 2-3 virtual PC's and would like them to run as well as my own AMD 3000+ Athlon 64 with 1 GB DDR400 Ram, which I bought back in 2005/6

Is it possible to run the core i3/5/7 on a windows XP system, or is there no driver support for this?

Thank you
 
1) What exactly does your Athlon 64 have to do with this, I'm confused? Do you want to virtualize on your Athlon?
2) RAM is very important. With 3 virtual machines my recommendation is to get 16GB of RAM.
3) Windows XP is EOL and extended support for Windows XP ends April 8, 2014. That means after that date you can't count on Microsoft to release new updates.

Point being, XP is outdated, move away from it, even if you could stay with it (yes you can with a Core i... CPU).

My recommendation would be to get a Core i5 2500k with 16GB of RAM and an SSD.
Virtual Machines, especially 3 of them, are IO intensive (SSD), memory intensive (more memory is better) and with 3 running, CPU intensive.

What do you want to run in a VM?
Why do you want to run in a VM?
 
Gnome said:
1) What exactly does your Athlon 64 have to do with this, I'm confused? Do you want to virtualize on your Athlon?
2) RAM is very important. With 3 virtual machines my recommendation is to get 16GB of RAM.
3) Windows XP is EOL and extended support for Windows XP ends April 8, 2014. That means after that date you can't count on Microsoft to release new updates.

Point being, XP is outdated, move away from it, even if you could stay with it (yes you can with a Core i... CPU).

My recommendation would be to get a Core i5 2500k with 16GB of RAM and an SSD.
Virtual Machines, especially 3 of them, are IO intensive (SSD), memory intensive (more memory is better) and with 3 running, CPU intensive.

What do you want to run in a VM?
Why do you want to run in a VM?
Click to expand...

Hello,

The most important reason for me to want to use a virtual machine is to start the process of securing my pc against identity theft / spyware infections etc.

My idea was to run all my 'suspect' applications (cracks etc) on 1 isolated virtual machine while keeping the host operating system clean of any downloaded material.

VM's I would like to have running on the 1PC
1. Ubuntu PC (never used Linux before)
2. Downloaded apps machine
3. Network monitor machine (Squid Proxy Server)

I am new to N+ and would like to set up a controlled environment where I can monitor strange behavior on my network, and to experiment with the file sharing between a linux pc and windows.

I have a training series called ethical hacking for beginners, my kaspersky antivirus classified some of the training material as trojans. I would like to be safe not to infect my host OS with these potentially harmful files, by keeping them on a separate pc.

I know network monitoring applications are quite resource intensive (if only on the network's bandwidth). I might rather buy a dedicated machine for this purpose..
 
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As Gnome said, bombard the thing with RAM

The whole point of virtualisation is that you never use CPU's 100% all the time, unfortunately RAM is another story and slows the system if it gets swapped out so each Virtual PC should have its own dedicated memory space.

Base OS its better to use something designed for it esp if you start using the Hypervisor or give Virtual stems better access to the CPU and other hardware. In the same line having hardware with PAE and AMD-V/VT-x enabled is also a big advantage.

If its for a server look at VMware ESXi or if its for home I find that Oracle VirtualBox on Linux give me the best all round experience.

I know there are many other solutions and opinions may vary on what solution to use, above is just my personal recommendation on where to start.
 
Flowerhat said:
My idea was to run all my 'suspect' applications (cracks etc) on 1 isolated virtual machine while keeping the host operating system clean of any downloaded material.

VM's I would like to have running on the 1PC
1. Ubuntu PC (never used Linux before)
2. Downloaded apps machine
Click to expand...

Install Virtual box as this is exactly what I use it for. Well except I use Linux Mint as my Base and dual booting to Windows 7 for the Odd game that do not work with Wine.

Squid should be on a separate pc.
 
For your kind of setup, a simple quad core CPU with 8GB of RAM should do just fine.
You might even be able to get away with a dual core if you currently have one, but please don't go and buy a dual core CPU.
 
As long as you're not doing massive or lots of VM's concurrently, you can use whatever processor you want.
A friend of mine is a quality controller (bug-tester) for a top development company and he uses an i7 for his VM's.... 8 threads = amazing for VM's (specifically for concurrent-running VM's).

Your RAM requirements are all dependant on how many VMs you run and how much work they're going to do.

If you don't use the computer for anything else, VMWare has a VM-Operating system which replaces Windows/Linux, and boots all your VM's for you. Otherwise, I'd recommend that you maybe do a Debian/OpenSuse build with Virtualbox (opensource virtual machine) installed on it. Virtualbox btw is much better imo than VMWare.
 
Elimentals said:
Install Virtual box as this is exactly what I use it for. Well except I use Linux Mint as my Base and dual booting to Windows 7 for the Odd game that do not work with Wine.

Squid should be on a separate pc.
Click to expand...

Hello please help me with the following:

I intend to use Windows XP / 7 as my "base" / HOST OS
Are you running windows 7 on "dual boot" as you said, or did you mean you ran it through the virtual machine?

As far as I know, gaming doesn't work well on virtual machines.
But I was wondering what if I wanted to play old outdated games like Halflife 1 or UT 1999?
 
froot said:
As long as you're not doing massive or lots of VM's concurrently, you can use whatever processor you want.
A friend of mine is a quality controller (bug-tester) for a top development company and he uses an i7 for his VM's.... 8 threads = amazing for VM's (specifically for concurrent-running VM's).

Your RAM requirements are all dependant on how many VMs you run and how much work they're going to do.

If you don't use the computer for anything else, VMWare has a VM-Operating system which replaces Windows/Linux, and boots all your VM's for you. Otherwise, I'd recommend that you maybe do a Debian/OpenSuse build with Virtualbox (opensource virtual machine) installed on it. Virtualbox btw is much better imo than VMWare.
Click to expand...

I have one em 8 core(4 + 4 Hyper-threading) i7 monsters with 8 gig of RAM, its always odd to think I have Windows 8 + Windows 7 + Ubuntu running in the background and ignored for most of the time.

I would recommend Mint above pure Debian as it is an easier route to start with. (you dont want me to say in public what I think of OpenSUSE)
 
Flowerhat said:
Hello please help me with the following:

I intend to use Windows XP / 7 as my "base" / HOST OS
Are you running windows 7 on "dual boot" as you said, or did you mean you ran it through the virtual machine?

As far as I know, gaming doesn't work well on virtual machines.
But I was wondering what if I wanted to play old outdated games like Halflife 1 or UT 1999?
Click to expand...

At boot I can select Linux Mint or Windows 7 as my Host PC. Both of them have VirtualBox Installed and my Virtual PC's are saved to a second drive that I can access does not matter what OS I boot.

I play most of my games via Linux Mint as my Host using Wine, but some games still lack support, for them I boot into Windows 7 as my Host. The Virtual PC's get used for software testing & development and can be started doesn't matter what OS I booted.

Some 3D games are supported inside virtual PC's but I would not even recommend looking at this as an option. I have a i7 with 2 x Nvidia 470 GTX in SLI and my system tell me to get off so(Low FPS) I dont want to know what lower specked PC's will do.

EDIT: And Pleeeeeease dont run XP as a host. Its crap beyond. Nothing wrong with running it as a client.
 
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For running virtual machines, you SHOULD use a 64-bit host AND ensure that VT (Hardware Virtualization) is enabled in the BIOS.
Without hardware virtualization, you won't be able to assign more than 2 cores/CPU threads to the VM in any case.

Unfortunately Directed I/O drivers doesn't exist for VirtualBox to be able to play 3D games at good framerates.

I'm using either Ubuntu desktop or Windows 7 with a few VM's (such as Fedora / Windows XP) to test software, but I haven't done this in a while now. The Core i7's are really awesome for running lots of services/VM's.
I'm just disappointed in myself that I got 2GB DDR3 1600MHz modules, instead of cheap 4GB DDR3 1333MHz modules - so now I'm stuck with 8GB of RAM :(
 
If this PC is to be used solely for the purpose of hosting VMs, I can recommend nothing other than VMWare ESXi. It is the lightest OS of all the OSes mentioned in this thread and is designed entirely for this purpose. It is also free for certain configurations (academic, few physical CPUs, etc)

Furthermore, if you intend to utilize this as a learning curve, this would be your best introduction to VMWare's products.
 
If you don't want to drop about 5k on a processor, look at the previous generation i7's - Triple channel memory means that you won't have to worry about RAM contention, and you can pack up to 24GB on that.

The last 3 PC's that I've built have been i7 930/950's, packed with a bunch of memory, and they virtualize like a baws :)
 
bullzeye.za said:
If you don't want to drop about 5k on a processor, look at the previous generation i7's - Triple channel memory means that you won't have to worry about RAM contention, and you can pack up to 24GB on that.

The last 3 PC's that I've built have been i7 930/950's, packed with a bunch of memory, and they virtualize like a baws :)
Click to expand...

2600/2600k = R3000/R3100 respectively.
You also get 8GB 1600MHz memory modules now so it's easy to push to 32GB now.
 
We've had quite a lot of issues with our ESXi setup, where as our Microsoft Hyper-V setup hasn't given us any issues yet.
ESXi or Hyper-V is recommended for dedicated server setups, but I'd rather recommend VirtualBox if you're going to run VM's on your desktop.
 
Pada said:
We've had quite a lot of issues with our ESXi setup, where as our Microsoft Hyper-V setup hasn't given us any issues yet.
Click to expand...

Off topic:

Is this with the older ESXi 3.5-4 or have you found issues with 5 as well?

I can go into detail on what Microsoft is up to in the Virtual arena but I guess that is stuff for another thread.

Simply put they just up to their old tricks.

Linux support

In July 2009 Microsoft submitted Hyper-V drivers to the kernel, which improve the performance of virtual Linux guest systems in a Windows hosted environment. Microsoft was forced to submit the code when it was discovered that Microsoft had incorporated a Hyper-V network driver with GPL-licensed components statically linked to closed-source binaries. Hyper-V provides basic virtualization support for Linux guests out of the box. Paravirtualization support is, however, available by installing the Linux Integration Components or Satori InputVSC drivers. On July 20, 2009, Microsoft submitted these drivers for inclusion in the Linux kernel under the terms of the GPL,[26] so that kernels from 2.6.32 may include inbuilt Hyper-V paravirtualization support.
Click to expand...

Source Wiki
 
How does VB see the 2 thread 4 core Intel CPUs, as 8 or 4 CPUs?
 
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