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oliver_reid
Contributor
Contributor

Newbie questions?

I am almost certainly going to by Workstation 10 but would be grateful for some guidance

I have a 12 core machine (2xX5690 3.46GHz 6-Core) machine with 96GB  I have 4 600gb SAS disks in two Raid 1 pairs for 2 logical disk

I intend to host with Linus and have mixture of LAMP and Windows server 2012 VM's. The Windows machines will need 4-8 cores (hyper threads count) and at least 8GB of RAM.

While with windows machine will be "powered on" at the same time they will rarely all run flat-out at the same time - so am hoping to tolerate a certain amount of overcommitment.

Questions

1 is Workstation as efficient as the full Wmware Suite at sharing resources: I am seeing it as having the same core technology -- bit is that correct?

2 What distribution of Linux  is the best for ease of setting up and admin (I am excluding pricy enterprise versions)

3 Are SAS disks OK are should I switch one pair to SATA -- a read somewhere in the WMW WS cannot use an OS "preinstalled on a SAS partition" - does that matter?

4 Can Similar VM's share the OS code files -- it looks like Child VM can share the OS files with its parent but I am not clear how that works?

5 Is it realistic to operate the suggested setup with WMW support -- I do not plan on buying 10 licenses?

6 Can you script a power off/power on cycle for a specific WM to be run from the host - the idea would be to reboot Windows VMs from a "virgin" snapshot of the OS on a schedule?

Many thanks !

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weinstein5
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No VMware Wotkstation and VMware Player for that matter are not as efficient as ESXi in providing virtual environment for the simple reason that ESXi is installed on the bare metal and does share resources with a host operating system.

I will let other with more workstation experience answer the other questions -

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful
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wmarusiak
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Hi

1 is Workstation as efficient as the full Wmware Suite at sharing resources: I am seeing it as having the same core technology -- bit is that correct?

For sure not as efficient as "full" VMware Suite. Although I am quite happy with my current setup: i5 3,2GHz, 32GB Ram, 2xSSD. I have 6 ESXi with 4GB RAM, vCenter, Vyatta, DC running on Windows 8.1 and my whole environment is quite responsive.

2 What distribution of Linux  is the best for ease of setting up and admin (I am excluding pricy enterprise versions)

Could you please clarify this one?

3 Are SAS disks OK are should I switch one pair to SATA -- a read somewhere in the WMW WS cannot use an OS "preinstalled on a SAS partition" - does that matter?

If disk is visible to OS then Workstation should use it. I used following setup for my environment - nexentastor with SSD for VM's cache and SATA drives for rest. Works perfect and than iSCSI for ESXi hosts.

4 Can Similar VM's share the OS code files -- it looks like Child VM can share the OS files with its parent but I am not clear how that works?

You are referring to Memory Transparent Page Sharing in ESXi - I am not aware of that function in Workstation. VMware KB: Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) in hardware MMU systems

6 Can you script a power off/power on cycle for a specific WM to be run from the host - the idea would be to reboot Windows VMs from a "virgin" snapshot of the OS on a schedule?

Here is reference to command line options. Tip: Working with VMware Workstation from the command line - TechRepublic

Best Regards, Wojciech https://wojcieh.net
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oliver_reid
Contributor
Contributor

1 is Workstation as efficient as the full Wmware Suite at sharing resources: I am seeing it as having the same core technology -- bit is that correct?

For sure not as efficient as "full" VMware Suite. Although I am quite happy with my current setup: i5 3,2GHz, 32GB Ram, 2xSSD. I have 6 ESXi with 4GB RAM, vCenter, Vyatta, DC running on Windows 8.1 and my whole environment is quite responsive.

2 What distribution of Linux  is the best for ease of setting up and admin (I am excluding pricy enterprise versions)

Could you please clarify this one? I mean Ubantu vs SUSE vs etc.?  FOR THE HOST OS

3 Are SAS disks OK are should I switch one pair to SATA -- a read somewhere in the WMW WS cannot use an OS "preinstalled on a SAS partition" - does that matter?

If disk is visible to OS then Workstation should use it. I used following setup for my environment - nexentastor with SSD for VM's cache and SATA drives for rest. Works perfect and than iSCSI for ESXi hosts.


I was referring to this text in Using VMW Workstation 10. As read it different WMS could share an OS installed on a Host partition  -- if so that would save disk space? BUT as I only have SAS disk I guess this will not work? Is it worth adding SAT disk to accomplish this?


You can install a guest operating system directly on a physical disk or unused partition on the host system.

A physical disk directly accesses an existing local disk or partition. You can use physical disks to run one or more guest operating systems from existing disk partitions.

Workstation supports physical disks up to 2TB capacity. Booting from an operating system already set up on an existing SCSI disk or partition is not supported.

4 Can Similar VM's share the OS code files -- it looks like Child VM can share the OS files with its parent but I am not clear how that works?

You are referring to Memory Transparent Page Sharing in ESXi - I am not aware of that function in Workstation. VMware KB: Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) in hardware MMU systems


I was referring to this text actually (same document)

Using Linked Clones

A linked clone is a copy of a virtual machine that shares virtual disks with the parent virtual machine in an ongoing manner.

Because a linked clone is made from a snapshot of the parent, disk space is conserved and multiple virtual machines can use the same software installation. 


E.g., If I have 4 linked Windows 2012 VMs linked to a parent WM can they share a single copy of the OS  --saving installation time, but also disk space?


Many thanks


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