Virtual Win 2008 R2 Server How ?

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I was thinking of run a virtual 2008R2 server on my laptop . But what would be the min specs I would need in order to launch it and for it not being a pile of poo when I mess with it?

I belive a min of 2G of Ram is required but what about the cpu? I am thinking of using Vmplayer and am running xp sp2 on the lappy (presumably I would have to update to 3)
 
Windows 2008 Server R2 is x64 only, so you'd need to run a hypervisor that allows x64 guests. I'm currently running a Windows 2003 host with Virtual Server 2005 and that only supports x86 guests so I have to upgrade to 2008 R2 to run Windows 2008 R2 as a guest.

I think your host CPU also has to support the virtualisation bits too - which might exclude your laptop depending on what spec.


Update: VMPlayer supports x64 guests with a x64 host CPU, but doesn't state if a x64 host OS is required.
 
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I think your host CPU also has to support the virtualisation bits too - which might exclude your laptop depending on what spec.

yup. you'll have to check if the cpu supports intel VT (or whatever the amd equivalent is - i forget :p). if it's a poor man's 64bit cpu like mine, you'd have to install it properly (maybe as dual boot if you can free up a partition on your hard disk)
 
Thanks for the heads up peeps :D Looks like I have failed the virtulisation route as my specs are no where near good enough.
So (and I think I know the answer to this one too) If I had a pc that was an Amd 2800 and had 4G of Ram on a 250G Hd with 4 NTFS partitions would I be able to duel boot Win server 2008? With XP 3 as the Main OS.. I amjust trying to find a way of run the above so that I can actually get the feel of it whilst I study each of my MCP's ...

If the above is not an option then looks like I will have to see I can get time on the real thing at work.
 
you really want more than 1 hard drive if you're going to virtualise. running host and guest off the same drive can be very sluggish. i'd dual boot.
 
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