VMWare Setup

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I have placed this here as it touches on many subjects so could go anywhere, but this is related to training so i placed it here
What I am trying to do is collect some data as to the most effective in terms of performance, VMWare setup I can come up with
I currently run VMWare 4.0 on a P4 2.8Ghz (800mhz HT) machine with 1024MB of Corsair XMS Low Latency DDR400 memory, the OS is installed on a 146GB U160 10k SCSI disk while the Virtual machines are on a 200GB 8mb 7200rpm Western Digital disk on its own IDE chain

now whilst this can run 4 or 5 linux boxes without performing too slugishly, i noticed it can run maybe 2/3 max windows boxes
the problem is this is my actual workstation, and it runs alot of background stuff I cant neccasarily turn off (yeah im a geek, i have lots of apps!)

I was considering a dedicated setup, but something this extravegant would cost enough to buy a handful of small machines and just not use VMWare

What are other peoples set ups? what performance do you get out of them? and what tweaks/ideas have you had to improve on this?
who has experiance with VMWare on linux, this may perform faster than VMWare on Windows

Answers on a postcard below please
I will try compile the results into an article of how best to utilise VMWare in a training environment, as well as my own experiances of it in a production environment

 

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Sounds like a cool system. First of all, you might want to consider the fact that Windows operating systems are resource hogs and that virtual Linux boxes are more efficient machines. Just a thought.

My set up? Well, my lab machine is a Dell Dimension 8300. I have a P4 2,60 GHz processor. Everything is on one 200 GB 7200 rpm HDD. I'm currently running 1.25 GB RAM. Oh...the host operating system is Windows XP Pro if that makes a difference. I'm running four virtual Windows Machines at the moment. I've described that set up in the 70-294 forum so probably don't have to repeat it here.

I haven't gotten around to it, but the upgrade to VMWare 4.5 is a free download. All you need are your registration credentials. It may improve some of the performance issues you mentioned.

Also, as you are probably aware, the settings on your virtual machines will probably affect performance. I had to set the virtual memory on my two servers to 256 MB and on my two client machines to 128 MB to get them to all run at the same time. Performance is acceptable but not stellar. Frankly, I still think it's a miracle that I can have a four machine virtual network living inside one box. Now if I could only simulate a VPN connection between one virtual machine and the next...

 

you should be able to if the network configuration us set up right
i just use bridge mode as it works as is out of the box
havnt tried many of the others, in production environments we have had multiple nics and assigned certain VOS dedicated access to specific cards

first thing i did with the XP machine was turn off all the visual crap, increased performance a ton
yeah i have four machines running just like you (like i said i will try to replicate your setup lol)
also still have two linux VMs running that i really dont want to turn off

I've noticed while my processor generally sits idle still, my memory usage is HEAPS! (1.5GB at last check) so im thinking another 1024 should suffice, besides i think thats Longhorns min specs ;)