PC for running VMs

[lucifir]

I am looking at getting a PC that I will use to run VMs on ... I want one that will be able to run VMs comfortably, as I will use this as a development machine for testing against different platforms as well as even to develop in the VMs.
I am thinking i5/i7 but leaning more towards i7 for the hyper threading and tripple channel memory ... what do u guys think??
any suggestions??

 

[morkhans]

VMs, the more power and cores the better really so Core i7 IMO. You also want to be able to add heaps of RAM if you intend to run multiple machines simultaneously. If you are planning to run ESXi then you need to pay attention to hardware support, which might put you more into the realms of entry level server.

 

[froot]

You could look into an entrylevel server, or you could build up a nice desktop pc with a decent Quad Core or i7, and with 8-16GB RAM. eSXi would be your best bet for VMs as you don't need a base OS then.

 

[Park@82]

eSXi

Yes, try ESXi or XenServer (Free)

 

[howardb]

I'm running multiple VM's on my AMD Phenon2 quad with 8GB ram and Win7 64-bit, no problems - granted the VM's are not always running tasks at the same time, but I've had no issues so far...
Currently using Win 95, 98 and XP, as well as DOS 6.22, Linux and the Google O/S (can't remember the name offhand)

 

[Conradl]

Don't waste your money by going for a very fast processor. I can show you very detailed stats of production host servers that use <20% of the CPU resources. For RAM, try not worry too much about loads of RAM, and the speed of the RAM is irrelevant. You may find that 4/8 GB is enough depending on how many machines you run. I easily run 8 machines with 3GB for testing (usually two Win2003 DC (256MB each), two Citrix servers (512MB each), one XP machine (128MB), one Linux (128MB), two "Other" 128MB - running VMWare workstation on XP.

The single most important consideration IMHO is hard disks. If you can, rather get multiple disks, i.e. 5 x 160GB rather than a single 1TB disk. In the above scenario I have 4 physical disks, and it improves performance more than a faster processor (currently using a E6600).

Lastly, is the type of software. Something like XenServer, or any type one hypervisor is good, but not very practical, since you can't actually use the host system - you need to access the guests through a console. Rather use VMWare Workstation (not free, but really cool dev software and worth every cent!), or VirtualBox (best free type2 HV), so that you can easily switch between environments.

 

[dabbler]

I have an E7400 and if I check out the specs, I am told that it has....

Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)
Increasing manageability, security, and flexibility in IT environments, virtualization technologies like hardware-assisted Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) combined with software-based virtualization solutions provide maximum system utilization by consolidating multiple environments into a single server or PC. By abstracting the software away from the underlying hardware, a world of new usage models opens up that reduce costs, increase management efficiency, strengthen security, while making your computing infrastructure more resilient in the event of a disaster.

Seems to have hardware support (?) for virtualization (?)

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=36500#specs (top of page is where all this stuff is)

I often wonder what that is all about

EDIT: I see its not included in the boxed one.

Intel® Virtualization Technology requires a computer system with a processor, chipset, BIOS, virtual machine monitor (VMM) and for some uses, certain platform software, enabled for it. Functionality, performance or other benefit will vary depending on hardware and software configurations. Intel Virtualization Technology-enabled VMM applications are currently in development.

 

[Conradl]

I have an E7400 and if I check out the specs, I am told that it has....

Seems to have hardware support (?) for virtualization (?)

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=36500#specs (top of page is where all this stuff is)

I often wonder what that is all about

EDIT: I see its not included in the boxed one.

The OS was written to communicate directly with the processor. However, since a Virtual host cannot access the processor directly, but has to communicate through a HyperVisor (either type1 or 2), Paravirtualisation, or a set of drivers written specifically for the guest/host, were developed to enable the Virtual machine to function without the ability to make calls directly to the processor. This had an impact on performance, and meant that certain OS platforms were unable to run in a VM (DOS is very difficult to virtualise for this reason).

VT is simply a set of instructions that replace the software translation of CPU calls and allow the processor to run the instructions directly. It is the VM equivalent of MMX....

 

[Asha'man X]

The Core i7's have Nested Paging support in the VT Extensions, and from I read in VirtualBox's help files, this can improve performance up to 10% in most situation. I would take the Core i7, and lots of ram, since if you plan to actually work inside the VM's doing some basic tasks, the limited ram assigned to them slows things right down.

 

[Juggy]

Yeah, i7 920 with 6x2GB ram modules and a few 500GB WD blacks. That should seee you running pretty well for a while considering most dev people use SQL you'll want 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2 as well TFS running in a VM for you code respository. You'll probably also use VS2005 and 2008.

If you have the money to spend rather get something that will run what you want easily than suffer with something slow. I've also read that the Nehalem processors are the best architecture for Virtualisation.

 

[lucifir]

thanx for all the info guys .... need to seriously think about this ... looks like i7 is the best bet ..... and doubt I would run multiple VMs at the same time ... but not sure about that ... also .... seems like I have a lot to learn about VMs as there is so much variety and features ..... would like to try them all ... but for now .. VMware player seems fine for me .. can't tell what the actual diff between the player and the workstation version is though, anyone know this??