questions about layering OS' with VM

[Mr. Friendly]

hey guys, I've suggested to my employers the idea of a letting me run several instances of XP over VM so I can multi-task several instances of our internal software.

I want to have a clearer picture of what's needed system wise.

quad core for sure. being it's a 32bit OS, 3 or 4GB of RAM (we'd use low end graphics solutions to a provide for my 4 monitors), HDD isn't really that important, but I know more is involved. do I need more then 1 NIC to run the net smoothly for all 3 OS?

what else do I need to know about making a presentation for this project?

[misterd]

This will all depend on how network heavy the application is, but even then you should be fine. If it's communicating to a database server or something along those lines, and only updating the changes to a row or something it's not anything to worry about. I have 4 VM's running over the same 100mbit trunked nic and a management interface on it as well and I've not had any issues. Good luck.

[JD]

Can't move to a 64bit OS?

I'd personally want 1GB of RAM for each VM, and then at least another 1GB for the host OS, though preferrably 2GB. So that's like 6GB of RAM or more.

You see if your VM's memory leaks into the page file, then things are going to get slow going. You want to try and keep it all in RAM and since it's a 32bit OS, you're going to be left with like 3.5GB. So 512MB per VM and 1.5GB for your host OS. If that's fine with you, then go for it.

[Mr. Friendly]

I don't understand your numbers jd. 3 OS over 4 screen. my primary OS will utilize 2 screens while the other two instances will have 1 screen each. if I have 3.5GB of RAM, that should give me 1.5GB for the primary OS and 1GB for each of the VM OS' running. I would just need to install another video adapter so I could display all 4 monitors.

with quad core I could still multi-task easily on the primary OS with 2 cores while using 1 core for the other 2 in VM.

another issue would be I have zero experience with running anything in VM...I'll have to give it a shot at home on my laptop. what free VM engine is the best and/or easiest to use?

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by Mr. Friendly

I don't understand your numbers jd. 3 OS over 4 screen. my primary OS will utilize 2 screens while the other two instances will have 1 screen each. if I have 3.5GB of RAM, that should give me 1.5GB for the primary OS and 1GB for each of the VM OS' running. I would just need to install another video adapter so I could display all 4 monitors.

with quad core I could still multi-task easily on the primary OS with 2 cores while using 1 core for the other 2 in VM.

another issue would be I have zero experience with running anything in VM...I'll have to give it a shot at home on my laptop. what free VM engine is the best and/or easiest to use?

Running a VM is exactly like running any OS; The only difference is that it relies on resources from the host.

Another thing that can get tricky sometimes is networking for shares between the host and VM.

It also depends on how demanding these virtual machines are going to be as they may not need a lot of ram.