After recently passing my VCP4 exam, and getting my free copy of VMware Workstation, I am looking to start working on my next cert (MCITP: Server Administrator).
I would like to build a new computer, so I could run several (4-6) VM's (for testing/training purposes) and I wonder if anyone has any recommendation for this.
So far, I am looking at either i5-2500k or i7-2600k CPU with 16 GB ram using P67 board (most likely Asus). I also have a separate SSD drive (128 GB) for all my vm files. Any idea how many Windows 2008r2/Windows 7 vm's will I be able to reliably host?
Also, does VMware workstation take advantages of Hyper Threading? I am still not sure if I would want to save about $100 and go with i5-2500k, which does not have HT and has less cache, or just go with i7 for maximum performance.
Thank you for any suggestions.
with SSD in place the bottle neck would probably be the RAM and CPU. if i'm in your position i would just for the MAX cpu, afterall you might never know you will be running CPU intensive tasks in future. good luck.
you did not mention the most interesting question - which OS do you want to use as host system.
My first choice would be 2k3-64 , then XP-64 , then 2008 R2 no servicepack , then Win7-64 no servicepack ... then Linux
I would not use Win7 or 2008 R2 with servicepack 1 at the moment
also 128 Gb SSD is not that much for 6 VMs
I am leaning towards i7 as the price difference is under $100, so the choice is easier to make.
My current host OS is Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate 64-bit, which I currently use with VMware workstation 7.1.4 and have no problems so far. I have noticed some complains about Windows 7 SP1 and vmware workstation; however, it seems like all the issues with memory and powering on vm’s were limited to 7.1.3 which did not supported SP1.
Are people still reporting same issues with 7.1.4?
I agree 128 GB is not much in today’s era of terabytes hard drives, but unfortunately I can't justify getting another SSD or getting 240/256 GB at this point. I will still have a normal hard drive available to move less demanding vm's of the SSD, so I hoping to manage it that way before I will be able to add another SSD.
some folks still report memory leaks with Win7-sp1 and WS 7.1.4
if you only use 2008 R2 and Win 7 VMs you could create two master VMs - one for each OS - and then save diskspace by using several linked clones
This is a great advice; however, should I be concerned about performance of linked clones? Is the drop noticeable?