VMware Workstation 6 on Quad-Core Core2 - W2003 32 bit or 64 bit host?

[vm_ws]

I have purchased a new computer with Quad-Core CPU (Q6600) and 8GB RAM.

It will be used to run many different VMs in Vmware Workstation 6.

Is there any advantage in using 64-bit OS vs 32-bit OS as a host?

AFAIK, I should be able to run 64-bit guests on both.

I know that in Windows 2003 processes are limited to 2GB memory per process.

Will that limit me to 2GB RAM per VM? What about performance?

[KevinG · Accepted solution]

I have purchased a new computer with Quad-Core CPU

(Q6600) and 8GB RAM.

It will be used to run many different VMs in Vmware

Workstation 6.

Is there any advantage in using 64-bit OS vs 32-bit

OS as a host?

AFAIK, I should be able to run 64-bit guests on

both.

Since you are using an Intel CPU, it must be EM64T with VT and a host BIOS that allows enabling VT. It does not matter if your host OS is 32-bit or 64-bit, what does matter is the hardware requirements.

I know that in Windows 2003 processes are limited to

2GB memory per process.

Will that limit me to 2GB RAM per VM? What about

performance?

Not exactly true, the /3GB switch allocates 3 GB of virtual address space to an application that uses IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE in the process header. This switch allows applications to address 1 GB of additional virtual address space above 2 GB. There is also the Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) is a Microsoft Windows Application Programming Interface that allows a 32-bit software application to access physical memory greater than 4GB.

VMware Workstation has a 8GB per VM limit and unlimited for all running VM's

Of course you must be using a host OS that supports 8GB of host RAM, like Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition...etc

[vm_ws]

Thank you for your reply, Kevin.

What about the performance? Would VMWare Workstation 6 work better on W2003 64 bit?

[KevinG]

Unfortunately, I don't have any benchmark data for you, but I don't think you will notice any difference between using a 32-bit host or a 64-bit host OS

[ClayMon]

Unfortunately, I don't have any benchmark data for

you, but I don't think you will notice any difference

between using a 32-bit host or a 64-bit host OS

It would be nice to see such benchmark data on host machines with 8, 16, 32 maybe even higher gigabytes of RAM.

I used to support 8 VM Server machines with 32GB of RAM running 32-bit with /PAE and they ran fine. The processors were 32-bit only, but if they had been 64-bit capable and the needed drivers were available, then I would have used a 64-bit host OS just because of how memory above 4GB gets handled.

There is some interesting information here: http://www.microsoft.com/servers/64bit/overview.mspx