Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

Would CPU/G2020 With 4G/Ram enough for running 3 VMs?

Tags:
  • RAM
  • Virtualization
  • CPUs
  • Business Computing
Last response: in Business Computing
Share
April 20, 2013 4:34:17 AM

Hi guys,

I wonder if that mentioned cpu and this amount of ram would be enough for running 3 virtual machines? 1 for server 2008, the second for win 7, the third for win8.

if not, can you guys recommend me a cheap build that would be able to do so? i'm on a tight budget currently :( 

thanks in advanced...

More about : cpu g2020 ram running vms

a c 121 à CPUs
April 20, 2013 8:17:42 PM

It depends on the VMs. If they are Windows XP that require only 512 MB per VM, then it will work fine. What VM solution will you use?
April 21, 2013 4:53:18 AM

GhislainG said:
It depends on the VMs. If they are Windows XP that require only 512 MB per VM, then it will work fine. What VM solution will you use?


Hi GhislainG, Thanks for answering. :) 

So do you think that specifications won't work fine if the VMs have server 2008 and windows 7 installed on them? even thought there will not be any extra running aplications on them, just the OS.
i want to use it as a home lab for MCITP exams.
Related resources
a c 121 à CPUs
April 21, 2013 5:40:21 AM

If would have been easier to answer your question if you told us what OS and VM solution will be running on your system. As long as your system requires no more than 2GB of memory, it will work. Initially allocate 1GB to Windows Server 2008 and 512MB to Windows 7 and Windows 8. Once the VMs have been configured, you can obviously change the allocated memory if need be. I based my recommendations on memory used by my VMs (the ones that are not doing much). Not enough memory will cause swapping and that can slow down the whole system.
April 21, 2013 10:14:27 AM

I will use Windows 7 ultimate and VirtualBox, do you recommend something else?

and btw, how about the mentioned cpu? will it do fine? a friend told me that i will need a quad core processor because every VM will use an independent core! and the cpu i will buy is just 2 cores and doesn't support hyper threading, but he isn't really an expert.
so i would like to know your opinion since you have a cpus master title? :) 
a c 121 à CPUs
April 21, 2013 10:38:13 AM

An an old E6420 processor can run several VMs; therefore your much newer and faster processor will be fine. Each VM can be assigned one or two processors, but they are shared. You should be more worried about the low memory on your system than the number of cores.
April 21, 2013 10:54:02 AM

Ok then... thanks GhislainG :) 
April 22, 2013 6:47:30 AM

GhislainG has this pretty well covered for you. While the processor is pretty anemic for doing virtual machine work, it's not as much of a concern as the limited memory. In a way, when doing virtualization you can over-provision, or allocate more, CPU resources then you really have. Your virtual machine is basically assigned a thread, not an actual physical CPU core, so having more cores will help you run multiple virtual machines more efficiently, but it's not quite as necessary. However, your memory cannot be over-provisioned. You can only assign as much as you have, and your host OS on the physical machine still needs a good portion of your memory to run. Running Windows 7, 8, or Server 2008/2012 on 512MB of memory is, well, painful. Memory is cheap, so I'd highly recommend upgrading to at least 8GB of memory, so you can assign at least 1 GB of memory to each of your VMs.

If you are looking to upgrade your host OS to Windows 8, be sure to go with the Pro version as you can also install Hyper-V within Windows 8 and run virtual machines just as you would on a full Windows Server 2012 Standard system with the Hyper-V role.
April 22, 2013 12:13:31 PM

That's what i decided to do after GhislainG's posts, thanks choucove. :) 

are there anything regarding the MOBO i should take into account for virtualization? now i'm thinking for that board GA-H61MA-D2V, will it do fine with virtualbox or hyper-v or even with bare metal virtualization like esxi and such?
April 22, 2013 1:20:03 PM

Most of your work for the hypervisors like Hyper-V and VirtualBox are going to be done at the processor level, that's where your features really lie. There are more features that can be beneficial in a virtualization environment but not for cheap. The board you selected should be fine for a basic virtualization system.
a c 121 à CPUs
April 22, 2013 1:51:23 PM

If you want to run ESXi, then do some research to make sure that motherboard works. The GA-H61MA-D2V should work fine with Hyper-V.
April 22, 2013 6:36:55 PM

Well... i think i overused the "thanks" word in this thread :D  ... but thanks for the last time guys, really appreciated.
!