2008 R2 eval on 32-bit machine 3

[gmail2]

Hi All

OK, this may seem like a silly question, but I'll fire ahead anyway I want to run an eval version of 2008 R2 as a virtual machine. I want to host this machine on my current Windows 7 machine which is 32 bit. Is this possible ? Or do I need a 64-bit host OS in order to eval R2, regardless of whether it's in a virtual machine or not ?

Thanks in advance

Irish Poetry - Karen O'Connor
Irish Poetry and Short Stories - Doghouse Books
Garten und Landschaftsbau

 

[pagy]

I believe using Vmware server 2 you can have a 64 bit guest on a 32 bit host

Paul
MCTS: Exchange 2007, Configuration
MCSA:2003
MCSE:2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
Scott Adams

 

[gmail2]

OK, thanks pagy - I'll give it a go and post back

Irish Poetry - Karen O'Connor
Irish Poetry and Short Stories - Doghouse Books
Garten und Landschaftsbau

 

[pagy]

Cool, yeah let us know please. I was planning on doing this myself at some point so any feedback would be good.

Paul
MCTS: Exchange 2007, Configuration
MCSA:2003
MCSE:2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
Scott Adams

 

[58sniper]

I believe that's only the case when your chipset supports 64bit. Not all machines do. My laptop supports them, but my desktop does not. There's an interesting article on VMWare's site about it, with some tools to determine whether your machine will support them.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[kmcferrin]

Are you talking about 64-bit or hardware-assisted virtualization? At this point almost any modern CPU will have 64-bit support, it has been standard for 4-5 years now. The hardware-assisted virtualization (AMD-V or Intel-VT) is a little less common. Almost all of AMD's CPUs support it, but many of Intel's CPUs still do not.

At any rate, you should be able to run a 32-bit version of Server 2008 R2 inside a 32-bit Windows 7 install with no issues, right? Unless you have more than 4GB of RAM (which wouldn't be available if your Windows 7 box is 32-bit) then there's really no benefit of running 64-bit, unless your application (Exchange 2007 comes to mind) requires it.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

 

[pagy]

2008 R2 only comes in 64 bit

Paul
MCTS: Exchange 2007, Configuration
MCSA:2003
MCSE:2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
Scott Adams

 

[SimonDavies]

As long as your processor supports the AMD or Intel 64bit instruction set and you have enabled Hardware Virtualisation in the BIOS then you can install a 64bit Guest OS inside a 32bit Host, I do it all the time at work using VMware Workstation 6.5.

Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[gmail2]

Hi Guys

Thanks for all the replies - just an update on this. My CPU does support intel VT, and I've already installed VMWare Server. But unfortunately I wasted a few hours downloading the wrong version of 2008 ! I'll probably have another go at the weekend and update you then

Irish Poetry - Karen O'Connor
Irish Poetry and Short Stories - Doghouse Books
Garten und Landschaftsbau

 

[gmail2]

Hi Guys

Well I guess this post is kind of redundant as Simon said that he does this all the time, but for what's it worth - I enabled VT on my laptop and was able to install 2008 R2 using VMWare. From what I understand, MS Virtual Machine doesn't support 64-bit OS on 32-bit guest. But I'm open to correction on that

kmcferrin - do you mind elaborating on what you meant by " almost any modern CPU will have 64-bit support" ? How does this differ from VT ?

Thanks again to everybody for your replies

Irish Poetry - Karen O'Connor
Irish Poetry and Short Stories - Doghouse Books
Garten und Landschaftsbau

 

[pagy]

VT is the Intel hardware assisted virtualization, AMD-V is obviously AMDs version.

VT is not available on all modern Intel processors whereas AMD-V is available on all modern AMD procs. I've been looking for a new laptop recently as my laptop only has a 32 bit processor but I have to look up the info on the intel proc in each machine I look at to ensure it has VT, which is proving to be a pain.... To boot not all OEMs allow you to enable VT in the BIOS for some reason even if the processor supports VT, certainly Acer didn't and I believe still don't, Dell didn't but recent BIOS upgrades have added this feature in.

Paul
MCTS: Exchange 2007, Configuration
MCSA:2003
MCSE:2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
Scott Adams

 

[kmcferrin]

I believe that if you purchase the Dell Mobile Workstation series of laptops (M2400, M4400, M6400, etc) they do support VT in the BIOS.

Back to GMail2's question, VT and AMD-V are basically the same thing. They are functions implemented in the CPU hardware that accelerate virtualization-related tasks. I believe that the first generation was mostly concerned about fast context switching (switching from privileged mode to user mode and back again), which is something that hypervisors have to do frequently. The second generation of virtualization extensions seem to be focuses on nested/extended page tables, which is allows the CPU to keep track of the separate page tables of each VM within it's own page tables. These are all functions that have historically been implemented in software in the hypervisor, but by moving them into the CPU you can increase performance in virtual environments. There will undoubtedly be many more generations of hardware-assisted virtualization instructions.

On the other hand, 64-bit support is just what it sounds like. It is support for the AMD64 instruction set (also called x86-64, x64, and EM64T). This instruction set is a series of extensions to the IA32 32-bit instruction set that CPUs have been using since the days of the 386 CPU. This instruction set allows data to be processed in larger chunks, but most importantly it increases the amount of memory address space available, allowing systems to address more than 4GB of RAM without resorting to tricks like PAE and AWE.

The AMD64 instruction set was introduced in 2003 with the AMD Opteron CPU, and quickly found it's way into Athlon64 CPUs. All of AMDs CPUs have included 64-bit support for 4 or 5 years now, and before that only the most entry-level consumer CPUs from AMD (Sempron) did not support it. Shortly after the release of AMD64 Intel began incorporating their compatible version (EM64T) into their Pentium D processors. However, because Intel had previously been pushing IA64 (the Itanium architecture) as the 64-bit successor to IA32, they were slower than AMD to include this feature across all CPU lines. Today, just about all of Intel's CPUs support 64-bit instructions. The only exception that I can think of off the top of my head is the Atom CPU.

Server operating systems and hypervisors have been shifting to requiring 64-bit support for a couple of years now, based on the ever-increasing memory requirements of servers. Client operating systems are beginning to shift that direction as well.

When I say "modern" processors, I am generally referring to anything produced in the last 3-5 years. The reason that I say "most" modern processors is that Intel has used 64-bit support, and then VT support, as a differentiator between their product lines. Higher-end CPUs typically included these features, lower-end "consumer" CPUs (Celeron) typically did not include these features, and mid-range CPUs may or may not have had one or both of these features, depending on the particular model. Even today not all Core 2 CPUs have VT support, so if you're going with Intel it's best to check their feature matrix to be sure that the features that you want are supported.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Hyper-V
MCTS:System Center Virtual Machine Manager
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator