Labs on 'main' laptop

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Not too sure where to post this but as I'm intending to use it to study the MS Certs I figured I'd go with this thread.

Basically; I'm looking to purchase a laptop (circa £500) that I can use as my main learning resource. I want to be able to install VMWare and run Server/Client OS but not sure exactly how these things work in a virtual environment. Can I run Server 2008 and Windows 7 (both inside a virtual PC) as a Server/Client relationship i.e. being able to deploy and centrally manage (all on a laptop)?

If anyone has done this or knows of someone who has and can make some recomendations on laptops I'd be most grateful. I'm not particular fussed on the OS that comes with it as I'll probably format it straight away with my Windows 7 Professional CD x86.

 

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Yes you can, the only advice I would give would be to ensure you get a laptop with the most amount of memory you can (4 - 8gb), you want to ensure that your vm's have a sizeable amount of ram each otherwise it get's painfully slow.

 

Excellent. Am I right in thinking they would be ok to run from the same HDD so long as I didn't do anything crazy or are 2 Virtual OS' not likely to cause a problem on an individual HDD anyway?

Just had a look on the ebuyer website and found this;

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/189888

Seems a decent spec but not sure about the processor but the RAM seems sufficient.

 

The only thing I would perhaps look out for laptop wise is to make sure that the hdd is faster than 5400, there would be a lot of read\writes to a disk and if you had a slower one it could just slow your whole environment down.

 

That knocks that one out then. Will have a look for another one

 

Not really, just buy a 7200 disk and rebuild it, one of the things I always do with new hardware (mainly laptops because I self build the rest of it) is to rebuild it with all of the bloatware removed. Also that gives you a spare hdd 'should' anything happen to the main one.

 

At the end of the day you not running a production server in the environment so it doesnt matter if you dont have peak performance as its just a test environment for your studies.Any decent laptop with a good amount of ram (4-8GB) should be fine for what you want to do.

 

I hate buying laptops - just too much choice out there.

I've narrowed it down to 2 HPs;

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF25a/321957-321957-3329744-64354-64354-4041735.html - dv6-2112ea (WJ234EA)

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HP-Pavilion-dv6-1340sa-Laptop-4GB-RAM-320GB-HDD_W0QQitemZ110518468205QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_Laptops_EH?hash=item19bb69fe6d

Do you think they are acceptable and which would you prefer? I'm pointing towards the one from the HP site just as it's bought from them direct and comes with a bag but the intel Core 2 Duo on the ebay one looks to be the better processor.

 

lol I missed that. I read the description;

so atleast they got it right there!

Was a bit concerned about warranty from ebay which is why I'm pointing towards HPs own site.... they seem similiar in spec it's just the processor.

 

Just incase anyone else comes across this I ended up settling with the Samsung R580, 4GB Ram and i3 processor. Actually came with a 64bit Windows too so saved me having to format

 

Would everyone recommend going for a server like the ML115 (VMware installed) or stumping like the OP on a lappie? Im leaning toward the server for a while but just can't make my mind up, god damn! I've around 500 quid budget by the way. And looking to head down the 2008 route first of all.

 

The ML115 would be my option, actually purchased one from Ebuyer two weeks ago and topped it up to 4GB of RAM.

So far I have also installed windows server 2003 and would be preparing it for VMWare shortly with ESX host and VM's installed. Cheerio and best wishes.

 

You will get a hell of a lot more bang for your buck if you buy a PC/Server for £500 instead of a laptop. Depends on if it needs to be setup on a small space or needs to be portable I guess.

 

Interesting that this came up, I'm just about to do the same thing, except I've already got the laptop.

For the moment I'm upgrading the internal drive from it's 200Gb 7.2k to a 500Gb 7.2k and dumping the 200Gb into a e-modular bay adaptor (Dells description) in place of the optical drive. All VM's are going on to the 200Gb, might give them set sizes as this should avoid fragmentation.

Any ideas on the number of VM's the machine should be able to handle roughly? Thinking of a setup involving 2x2008 Servers, 1x2003 Server, 1xWin7, 1xWinVista, 1xWinXP, 1xOSX, maybe a linux box. Not run many vms before so not sure of the CPU load, only for testing so they're not going to be taxed.

Speces: 2.53Ghz Core 2 Duo (no HT), 4Gb RAM.

Could upgrade it to 8Gb but tbh I'd rather spend the $300 on 1/2 of a ML 110 G6 so for the time being the 4Gb will have to do.

 

You aren't going to be able to run as many VM's as you have mentioned with only 4GB ram. Ram is far more important than CPU in this scenario. CPU is still important though, and on a dual core laptop you will also struggle I think.

Start off with 2 or 3 and see how you get on really. You can probably 'just' get away with 512MB for the servers, and 256 if you use XP for the clients.

 

i couldnt really see anyone mention it...forgive me if they have.

But the most important part i found for me, was a processor that supports hardware virtulisation. Especially if you want to run 64bit OS.

I believe R2 of 2008 needs a 64bit processor, and you cannot run a 64bit os inside VMWare workstation unless you have hardware virtulisation.

Also ensure that the laptop supports turning on hardware virtulisation in the bios... it sounds silly but i know of a few that dont!!

 

I also have the ML115 server, but I find I lack mostly in Memory and HD space... this is something I will need to change soon. Since this server belongs to work, I will order some memory modules at work and HD's.

 

Since the last post we've figured out the spare income from our new jobs / new apartment etc and it appears I might have a bit more to play with than I thought, I'll be looking at a desktop based server 2008 hyper-v whitebox now so it'll have oodles of RAM thrown at it and a 4/6 core AMD CPU most likely.

 

Sounds like a great machine for Virtualisation purposes. Just ensure that the motherboard supports harware assisted virtualisation, or Hyper-V will throw a strop and not work.