Recommended Hardware for Optimal Workstation Performance

[SinghSingh]

I want to design a hardware solution optimized for running Ubuntu as my Host OS and enough reources to simultaneously run 4 VMs. I'd like to hear from the community on what type of HW configuration you would choose to meet these requirements.

I think i would need a minimum of 8GB RAM (2 GB for each Guest and 2Gb for the Host). I also need to pay attention to my Hard Disks. I was thinking about running maybe 2-3 Hard Disks (1 for the OS and the others for my Guests). I would do this in order to keep my workloads separated and to prevent saturation of my disks. Should I look at SATA or...? Another consideration would be to use solid-state drives...although they do not come cheap.

What about CPU\Cores? I think a dual-socket, dual-core would be great but I also want to bring this in within a budget of say $1K.

What do you think?

Thanks,

[thro]

I've been running workstation on and off since about 1999 on Linux and Windows.

I'd suggest paying more attention to the requirements for your Linux distribution in terms of device drivers (i.e., pick hardware that is supported/certified), then add RAM. CPU usage for your VMs will vary a lot depending on usage, but I'd suggest that you can get away with less than 1 core per VM (unless you're running CPU intensive tasks on them - i'm assuming you're talking stuff like DCs, file/print/mail/etc...).

Even in a production server environment at work, I am running ESX on 3x 8 core servers, hosting about 20 VMs (for ~100 users), i can run them all on a single 8 core machine with CPU to burn...

I also run workstation on my laptop under vista with 4gb and a core2 duo. RAM is the issue...

I'd say your thinking of 2gb per VM is on the money, and 8gb should be plenty to run 4 VMs on a quad core box without any issues, assuming they're for testing stuff...

Obviously more RAM/CPU will always help to an extent, i just don't think throwing much more would be worth it as far as bang/$ goes.

Could maybe get a better idea if you let us know what sort of workload the VMs will be under? Unless you're pushing them to do real production workloads (as opposed to small scale TESTING), i don't think disk throughput will be an issue, even with SATA - except for maybe when trying to boot multiple VMs simultaneously (as in, powering them all up at the same time, rather than waiting for one to finish bootup, then powering up the next one)?

I use/administer: ESX 3.5 | VirtualCenter 2.5 | Workstation 6.5 | Vmware Server 2.0 | Windows 2003 | FreeBSD | Redhat EL

[RDPetruska]

What are the guests you are looking to run? I can easily run 3 Windows-based guests (2000 Server 256 MB RAM, 2003 Server 512 MB RAM, XP 256 MB RAM) on my XP laptop with 2 GB of RAM. I'd say that for most machines, 2 GB of RAM per guest is insane. I personally keep and run all of my guests on an external firewire drive with no issues.

[SinghSingh]

Your comment about my RAM numbers being insane made me laugh. Thanks! I am not running anything too RAM or I\O instensive but I do have a very low tolerance for any sort of perf issues when interacting with my guests. I also want to build in some headroom so I can spin-up more than 3-4 Guests if need be.

On a related note, have either of you ever considered building a box with Windows or Linuxrunning natively and swapping-out the default shell for VMW Workstation? I'd like to have thebox boot right into Workstation and optimize the Host OS to this purpose.

[thro]

RAM is cheap these days, although you probably won't need 8gb, for the extra couple of hundred bucks its definitely worth it, if only for disk caching on the host OS.

With that much RAM, i don't think there would be any real benefit of getting rid of the Windows/Linux default shell (~200mb of RAM out of 8gb is not much, and it uses minimal CPU when only hosting VMs), if you want to do that sort of thing you're probably wanting a server running copy of ESXi...

I use/administer: ESX 3.5 | VirtualCenter 2.5 | Workstation 6.5 | Vmware Server 2.0 | Windows 2003 | FreeBSD | Redhat EL

[RDPetruska]

On a related note, have either of you ever considered building a box with Windows or Linux running natively and swapping-out the default shell for VMW

Workstation? I'd like to have the box boot right into Workstation and optimize the Host OS to this purpose.

Check out Ulli's MOA project at