Best OS for VMware on a laptop

ZuG · 28 Sep 2011 at 10:28

Hello.
I want to run 4 instances of Windows XP on a laptop. Would running 2008 Server be the best option as a base OS with windows XP vm's on top of it?

Can anybody explain how access to the USB ports is handled when there is a base OS. If I have a USB device, would I need drivers for the device in the base OS so the Windows XP VM can see it?
Cheers.

GJUK · 28 Sep 2011 at 11:12

Windows 7 with VM workstation..can assign USB ports to the VM

It what I be doing

Regards

Gary

Phrozenpenguin · 28 Sep 2011 at 19:50

Or you could run VMware Fusion on a Macbook (air or pro). Depending on your Win XP requirements you would be fine. USB devices get assigned to each machine - not done at a port level.

_-J-_ · 30 Sep 2011 at 04:22

Depending on the spec of the laptop, would it not be better to put Linux on there and them VMWare server on top?

derfderfley · 30 Sep 2011 at 18:57

ZuG said:
Hello.
I want to run 4 instances of Windows XP on a laptop. Would running 2008 Server be the best option as a base OS with windows XP vm's on top of it?

Can anybody explain how access to the USB ports is handled when there is a base OS. If I have a USB device, would I need drivers for the device in the base OS so the Windows XP VM can see it?
Cheers.

If you want to run 4 simultaneous VM's your looking for a laptop and OS that will handle 8GB of ram, so Win7 64bit would be my choice. As a side note disk performance will be the killer for running multiple VM's simultaneously on a laptop.
Assuming you plan on running VM Player (which can be used to create VM's and is free) rather than VM Workstation. You simply connect the USB device to the host machine, then click on the VM Player and select attach to VM. USB memory sticks work fine without drivers on XP (as they usually do).
If you need to connect something like a USB to serial adapter you will need to install it's drivers into the VM XP machine, I have done this and it works fine.
It's worth installing the VMWare drivers into each of the VM's as it makes things like changing screen resolution in the VM's much more painless.

ZuG · 30 Sep 2011 at 19:20

We installed VM Workstation on a Windows 7 64 bit laptop and it works well. However, we can only install 2 before the performance is affected. The USB devices are 3g dongles and interesting we found there was a large performance hit on them as the CPU load went up.
We are getting a better laptop

derfderfley · 30 Sep 2011 at 20:00

ZuG said:
We installed VM Workstation on a Windows 7 64 bit laptop and it works well. However, we can only install 2 before the performance is affected. The USB devices are 3g dongles and interesting we found there was a large performance hit on them as the CPU load went up.
We are getting a better laptop

As ever when running and VM software from VM Player for a single VM to ESXi on a server running 20 VM's, memory (lots of) and hard disk (fast) performance make a huge difference.
Do you need this to be portable? as a good desktop machine would be a lot cheaper than a monster laptop.