Fusion 8 Pro (Mac) / how many vCPUs? (3,5 GHz Intel Core i5, ultimo 2014)

[rschmid]

Hello,

I am running the trial version of VMware Fusion 8 Pro on a iMac.

Mentioned CPU in title has 4 cores and 4 threads.

How many vCPUs am I able to create for my VM running in Fusion 8 Pro.

Kind regards,

Roland

[MacsRule]

Since your Mac needs some cores to operate too, how about 2 cores to each.

[rschmid]

this means there are only 2 cores left for vCPU or virtual machines within Fusion?

what about the 4 threads?

Kind regards,

Roland

[wila]

Hi,

It would have been nice if you had given us CPU details instead of the apple model as that would have saved us the googling for finding the correct CPU.

If I'm not mistaken then this is your CPU:

http://ark.intel.com/products/80810

It should be no problem to setup VMs with 8vCPUs and 16 vCPUs on that physical CPU.

Not sure if I would though as it all depends on the software that is going to use it if it actually makes sense and will make your workload run faster (instead of slowing it down due to the additional overhead.)

For the record, threads are not exactly cores/CPUs and the mapping of a vCPU to a thread might not actually give the performance you are after.

--

Wil

[rschmid]

Hi Wil,

thank you for the answer.

I want to setup a Lab with up to 6 virtual Windows Servers (2008 + 2012) like Active Directory, Exchange and vSphere ESXi (nested), etc. only for learning purpose.

Without any production environment.

Kind regards,

Roland

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Really just try and see how far you get as processors behave differently.

With virtual hardware 11 you are limited to 16 vCPUs in your guest OS.

I'm not sure what the limit is for vHW12 (Fusion 8), but I do suggest to start a bit lower and scale up if you need more.

Your guests will be sharing the CPU resources among each other, so it is not like 4 dual CPU nested VMs need 8 vCPUs in your virtual ESXi.

--

Wil