Desktop CPU For VM's

[Carlosinfl]

I've never looked into running VM's on my main machine at work but I'm showing a need to be able to manage and run multiple VM's from my desk. I don't need to use this as a main workstation for me so it can be dedicated to running ESXi or even Oracle's VirtualBox ontop of a Linux O.S. but I'm not sure if there is a significant performance difference between AMD and Intel desktop CPU's. I searched but a lot of different articles and none being recent that I could find so I apologize if this is a common question but I couldn't find a hit.

I need to be able to run anywhere between 2-8 VM's.
Looking to have 8-16 GB's of high performance RAM.
Disk space is always available

Thanks for any info!

 

[/usr/home]

I run an Intel i3-2120 with 32 GB of cheap DDR3 Corsair on mine and it works great. As long as I split the VMs across multiple HDDs, it works really well. I usually stick 2 non IO heavy VMs per HDD and the heavier VMs on their own single one. This isn't a production network, but for my home lab and it works great and is speedy enough for home use. It uses way more RAM and HDD than CPU,

 

[CEpeep]

Desktop CPUs are fine. If you want to use VT-d on an Intel platform, make sure you pick a CPU that is compatible with it.

 

[zero2dash]

+1 on both of those posts.

I've done VM's on Intel and AMD; I can say the Intel's seemed to be a little faster; don't know why, can't really prove it though.

I run 2 VM's concurrently (7 and Server 08) on my laptop at school which is the i3 2350 in my sig. I give 2 cores + 2GB to each VM, they run great using VMware Player 4. i3's are a safe minimal bet to run like a top for at least a couple VM's; 8GB is a minimal amount of RAM I'd say but obviously the more the better. You basically just have to make sure you have enough leftover after your host OS is running. Depending on what that is, go from there.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

All current desktop chips should work just fine.

The key part is that if you need Direct I/O Mapping (the ability to assign a piece of hardware natively to your guest OS) you will need something that supports Intel's VT-d or AMD's IOMMU.

Keep in mind that not only the CPU needs to support VT-d or IOMMU, but also the motherboard chipset AND bios.

Most current Intel and AMD CPU's support VT-d/IOMMU. Notable exceptions are all if Intel's overclockable "K" chips, and the first stepping of SB-E chips, which have this feature disabled.

If any of these are lacking it won't work.

It's relatively easy to find AMD based motherboards that have full bios and chipset IOMMU support. With Intel it's a little tricker. Some consumer boards do, but the vast majority do not, and it's often not very well documented if a particular board does or does not.

 

[Quartz-1]

I've never looked into running VM's on my main machine at work but I'm showing a need to be able to manage and run multiple VM's from my desk.

Get a second machine that's dedicated to running the VMs, then connect to the VMs using MSTSC, VNC, etc. You don't want Windows accidentally rebooting everything.

 

[oneforspeed]

I have seen and heard a lot of people saying they like AMD's over Intel cpus when discussing virtual machines. I don't think you could go wrong either way. I did run across a Intel cpu in a laptop that would only run 32 bit virtual machines. I believe it was a P7450 dual core. The cpu specs will list this--> Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) No <--- If they are not capable of running 64bit vm's. http://ark.intel.com/products/36734/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-P7450-%283M-Cache-2_13-GHz-1066-MHz-FSB%29

On another note I had a E6600 Intel machine that performed very well. It really depends on the specific processor and components just like everything else we do with our computers.

oneForspeed

 

[/usr/home]

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