VMware Workstation 9 - Processor Configuration

[techleak]

Hi. I am new to this forum so hi to everyone. I am currently trying to re-create my virtual environment at home for Windows Server 2008 R2 and other os. I have i7 Quad-Core CPU. So far, when I created virtual machines, I've set processor config to 1 processo and, 4 cores. I realised, I could use 8 logical processors. Now, how do I set up each virtual machine for maximum performance?

Lets say I have 4 virtual operating systems... what should my processor configuration be?

Thank you in advance

[kdshapiro]

There seems to be a prevailing wisdom, and maybe a knowledgebase article loading up a VM with vcpus will lead to potential processor contention due to Windows scheduling. From my own experience, I use two vcores in my virtual machines. I usually set 1 processor with 2 cores. That configuration seems to provide adequate performance.

My environment is Windows 7 Ultimate with a 970 cpu.

[EV_Simon · Accepted solution]

Actually rule of thumb is to use a single cpu\core unless you start finding that the single CPU is causing issues and slowdowns, it's at that point that you should start adding cores.

In my home lab pretty much everything is running on a single CPU as I am more likely to run into ram issues before cpu constraints.