Virtual desktops and storage

SirChumpalot

SirChumpalot

SirChumpalot

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Joined
31 Oct 2012
Posts
290
Hi guys,

I'm currently building a HTPC which I intend to use for mainly media playback and lab work.

I plan on running VMWare Workstation and wondered what would be a good amount of storage if I intended to run multiple workstations concurrently. I realise I may have to upgrade my memory (currently only 8GB), that's fine. I have a feeling this is more of a factor than physical storage.

I realise I'm going to need more storage than my 256GB M4 SSD, only due to the amount of media I have (around 500GB). What would you guys recommend in terms of fast mechanical storage, or perhaps another SSD to go alongside the M4?

Thanks in advance for your help.

David
 
If you're only running a couple of VMs then the storage shouldn't be huge, allow 20 GB or so for OS partition plus extra for any apps data and you should be fine. Obviously an SSD will be much quicker and given the low storage requirement you could get a fairly low capacity one which won't cost the earth.

8 GB memory will be fine for a couple simultaneously (especially if you allow VMware to swap out VM memory to disk). Sounds like in your case the memory will have biggest impact so if you have budget then probably worthwhile.

All this of course depends on what you want to do eith the VMs and whether you're doing a load on the host OS at the same time.
 
Thanks for the reply. That's helped a lot.

I had a feeling the memory would be the biggest factor. If I were to add another 2x4GB (giving me 4x4GB). Would this run better than 2 x 8GB. Sorry for what is probably a very lame question, I've been out of this game for quite some time.

Regarding what I'd like the VMs for, I plan on running a MySQL server on one of them with a couple of clients. That's about it really.

So you think another 200+ GB SSD will be ample. I can then store my media on a 1TB/2TB SATA hard disk and I'm set?

Thanks again for your help

David
 
I'd say that if you go with 16 GB and a 200+ SSD then that will be more than enough for what you're doing and give room for growth if you want to do more later.

Always reluctant to recommend massive amounts of extra hardware as not within everyone's budget as much as we all like to spec dream systems, but if the 16 GB and SSD is in your price range then it will be worth the investment.

If all your client VMs are the same OS then you should look at using linked clones as this keeps storage low and works well (very well) with SSD based VMs.
 
Thanks again for you advice. Would you mind commenting on what would be the preferred setup when it comes to memory? 4x4GB or 2x16GB.

In the meantime I'll do some searching.

Cheers
David
 
Another question if you don't mind.

I'm planning on trying to expand my limited knowledge of Linux and would like to install Ubuntu 64-bit.

I was thinking about running a dual-boot setup alongside Win 8 Pro. Would (could) I install Ubuntu on the SSD on a seperate partition? Or would I be better off installing it onto the larger disk?

I know you can run Ubuntu from a USB drive but from what I've been led to believe this has limited functionality when compared to a proper install. Is that right?

Cheers

David
 
Haven't played much with Windows 8 other than as general user, but from what I recall there are likely to be problems running it dual boot with Ubuntu due to the new boot loader with Win 8 - someone else may be able to correct me on that if I've got that wrong.

But given that you're running VMWare it would be sensible to install it as a VM and then you can crash and burn it as many times as you want, try different versions, etc.
 
From my experience in running VM's at work on the same machine, the biggest issue for me is disk IO. I can run W7 host + 2x server 2008 R2 with 16GB of RAM on the host without too much hassle, but I had to get separate disks for them, because as soon as I tried to do anything intensive on one machine, it would kill the others. Perhaps different on an SSD, I haven't tried yet.

Possibly not relevant to your situation, but worth keeping in mind.
 
death_looms said:
From my experience in running VM's at work on the same machine, the biggest issue for me is disk IO. I can run W7 host + 2x server 2008 R2 with 16GB of RAM on the host without too much hassle, but I had to get separate disks for them, because as soon as I tried to do anything intensive on one machine, it would kill the others. Perhaps different on an SSD, I haven't tried yet.

Possibly not relevant to your situation, but worth keeping in mind.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

Do you think it would make sense in that case to get a smaller (64GB perhaps) SSD for the other OS? I could stretch to this. Then a standard 2TB drive for all the media and other gumph
 
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