ReFurbing a Laptop and VMware

[ste_mulv]

Hello everyone,

I have a laptop that I used through uni (Fustisu Siemens Amilo 1520) that since receiving a laptop for my job, has sat wasting away as a 4od/iplayer/mkv player.

I now want to get it back to top working form!

As it has sat with the charger in pretty, much non-stop for the last year, the battery is propper dead! so I intent to purchase a new one, however I will continue to use my old one when it is plugged in for long periods.

The computer is starting to get very hot when running and very often the fans have to go into overdrive to disapate some of the blistering heat that it develops, this had lead me to want to give the whole thing an overhall, but what can be done about the fans?

Also it is running a lot slower than it used to, so i would like to clean the circuits to get the most back out of it, but I am unsure what to use... I assume rubbing alcohol would work, but not sure, any suggestions.

VMware installations. Once the hardware is back toegther (and hopefully still working) I aim to run VMware on it, to give me different desktops for CAD (Win XP), Media Centre (LINUX MCE), Electronic CAD (Fedora), normal surfing (Win 7). This is so I can reduce the likly hood of me having to remove all the files that build up before re-install an OS.

BUT, I have never done a VM ware installation! Basic questions... Can I install VM as a base installation, or so I have to install an OS to install the VMware into? if I allocate all resorces to the a virtual machine, what will the speed difference be between the VM and if I had just installed the OS directly. Which VMware product is the best to use?

Any other suggestions how to maximise the power that I can get but still maintain the flexibilty of VMware?

Cheers

Ste

 

[mdjmcnally]

Depends what VM edition you run

VMWare Server sits on top of an OS such as Windows or Linux
VMWare ESXi Free Edition sits on the bare metal

With ESXi then you will have no console for the machine at all as is designed as a minimal bare metal hypervisor. As such you need another machine to access the VMWare GUI to create Virtual Machines.

With VMWare Server you can use the OS on the laptop to run the VM GUI and create machines etc.

If new I would start with VMWare Server.

 

[memyselfandi]

The fans running more on the system is probably due to overheating due to a build up of dust etc on the internal cooling (heatsinks and fans). This will probably improve if you carefully clean it but don't go to anywhere the circuits with alcohol etc ... it's not needed and could cause damage.

I'm not sure why you are looking at VMWare instead of just multi-booting the different OSes.

VMWare ESX is the bare metal product which runs as a hypervisor level allowing multiple OS to run simultaneously. But, as has been stated, it does not have a local console for you to use hence is not suitable for what you want, (also it is limited on what hardware it will support so you would be likely to have issues anyway). VMWare also have other products which you install within an OS and then allow you to access another environment as well as the base OS you are running. These obviously run more slowly as there is going to be an overhead from the hosting OS. Something like VMWare Workstation or Player may be suitable ... or another product such as VirtualBox.

Now that VMWare Player is able to create new virtual machines instead of just running pre-existing ones I would probably go with that ... well either that or just dual boot.

 

[mooky32]

VMWare options

A great VMWare option is to run VMWare Workstation on your base Windows OS and then run Vsphere or ESXi within the VMWare Workstation.
I operate this configuration and it gives you a lot of flexibility.

In order to do this this ideal situation is to be running a 64 bit host OS with as much memory as possible. 8GB ideally but big ask I know!
With this setup you are even able run multiple copies of VSphere and use some interesting features such as High Availability and VMotion.

When you create a VMWare image within the Vsphere instance you are in effect running a virtualised OS that is running in a virtualised Vsphere platform running within Workstation, deeply nested as you can see!
This means performance with the Vsphere virtualised hosts is slow but not unusable. A caveat is that you cannot run 64 bit OS versions within the Vsphere environment. Simply run any 64 bit OS you need directly under VMWare workstation if needed.

This is serious virtualisation and may be more than you are after, but as I say - it's just an option.

Cheers

 

[J.B]

Clean the circuits? What?
The fans will probably be packed with dust, you can take laptops apart and clean the CPU heatsink this will normally sort it.

Im not sure virtulising is the best option for a low spec laptop, perhaps a large hard drive a quad booting?