Whats the limiting factor in running say 4-8 VM on one hardware?

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Isit the CPU, Memory or HDD?

Would like to run at least 8 test VM all running at the same time on a laptop.

At the moment i'm thinking getting an alienware with i7, 4gig ram and 1TB hdd
Do you think the hardware is good enough to run 4-8 VM at once?

Dave

 

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RAM is important.

second dont buy alienware they look sexy but they are not as good as they look. Alienware are generally overpriced and you can build yourself better systems for half of wha they charge.

Also if you want superfast aswell as lots of ram get a 4 solid state hard drives and run RAID 1+0 but that might be a bit beyond your budget.

 

Depends on what you're doing with those VMs. But generally speaking, you're gonna want to get as much RAM as you can feasibly afford.

 

It also depends on what Alienware laptop you're getting, the m15x is a lovely laptop but simply far too heavy to lug around all over the place, I wouldn't even consider the m17x if you want to have a portable device.

As far as vm's go, I currently run a HP 2510p with 4gb of ram and I can get 5 running, they are a tad slow but they run (512mb each). I also happen to own both the m11x and the m15x, the 11x currently has 8gb of ram installed for exactly this reason (virtualisation) where as the 15x only has 4gb of ram, it was originally purchased at the beginning of June to be my mobile virtualisation platform but at 10lb in weight I decided to get the 11x instead.

What ever you decide make sure you get a laptop that's capable of running 8gb (all of the currently Alienware laptops are) as well as getting a decent and fast hard disk (after all the more vm's your running the more concurrent read\writes you will be doing to the disk). Finally a word on the CPU, whilst it's important that you get one that is capable of running with Intel's VT it's not too much of an issue if it's fairly slow with regards to clock cycles, after all you won't be running the vm's in a production environment. To give you an idea, the m11x I have has the SU7300 processor, defaults to 1.3ghz, over clocks to 1.73ghz, more than adequate for my needs (especially as the 2510p only has a cpu of 1.2ghz and doesn't oc). My m15x has the i7 620M processor, over all it runs at 2.66 and oc's to 3.33, I got that processor specifically because of virtualisation as well because the 720 - 920 won't be as good as far as virtualisation goes.

On a side note, I am actually selling my m15x so if you're interested let me know (it's 3 weeks old, cost over £1600 but I am selling it for £1350), if you want further details please pm me.

 

build yourself a better laptop?

 

It can be done but its a pain in the arse, still end up cheaper than an alienware though!

 

I should add that if you're planning on using Windows 2008 server then utilise Differencing disks and you won't need to use a 1tb disk.

 

Thanks for the info guys.

Do you guys know if the alienware laptop x11 or x15 support esxi? I really like to play around with vmware vsphere
or if not do you guys know where i can get a cheap server that supports esxi?

Thanks!

 

Yip: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptop-computers/

Quick Google btw - remember someone offered the options to design your own, now if I only I could remember the company that did the chassis that took 3x HDDs

Tek note - I have never dealt with that company and I'm not affiliated to them in any way so don't take it as a recommendation please!