VMWare hardware requirements?

[Raistlin1022]

I'm contemplating replacing my 6-computer lab with a single VMWare box. What I'm concerned with is the REAL HW requirements of VMWare. I see on their site that they recommend sufficient RAM for each potential OS (mine will be various combinations of RH9, Win2003 and WinXP, for the most part). I'm curious what actually works well? And specifically, what are the processor recommendations. I have a 1Ghz Athlon box with 512MB of RAM, but am suspecting that's low. Is it? I've considered building a new system in the 3Ghz range, with 1-2GB of memory, but don't want to needlessly spend the money (of course) if something I have will work (or only require a few upgrades). I know that hotter/newer system will give better performance, but will it make that much of a difference?

So, does anyone have experience with a particular set of specs (CPU, RAM, HD) and VMWare they can share with me?

Thanks
Damon

Damon Garn
Technical Instructor
MCSE, MCT, CCNA, Linux+, Network+, Security+

 

[mjbianco15]

We've been using VMWare Workstation for the past year. Were using Compaq/HP xw6000 workstations to push the boxes...we're running 2-3 production boxes concurrently one each VM PC (Win2000 Server, 2003 Server, etc..). Here are the spec's were using:
Dual 2.4 Zeons
SCSI drives (10k or 15k...no IDE)
2GB of RAM (512 for each VM)

 

[Xemus]

RAM is the biggest component to worry about, and with more than one VM running at a time, you will almost definitely want more than 512 total. Mjbianco's stats look better than your current stats for this issue.

http://www.closedsocket.com

 

[streamguard]

I have used VMWARE and Virtual PC I can tell you this The new Virtual PC 2004 from Microsoft Rocks, Useabilty is Gravy you can create ISO images of everthing and use those and it shares from the host pc excellent. On thing i like about Virtual pc over VMware is that Virtual PC is not as memory intensive as VMWARE.
I vote for the new Virtual PC from microsoft.

 

[Raistlin1022]

I've looked into the MS Virtual Server/Virtual PC options. What concerns me is the obvious lack of support for Linux. I'm not surprised, of course, but I do have a requirement for Linux/BSD solutions... Anyway actually tried it?

Damon

Damon Garn
Technical Instructor
MCSE, MCT, CCNA, Linux+, Network+, Security+