Which SSD for virtual machines

ringo747 · 31 Jul 2012 at 17:43

Getting a new work laptop and have the option of getting an SSD. I had thought of the Crucial M4 256GB but then I saw the Vertex 4 256GB which has much higher write speeds. For running a number of resource hogging VMs what option would be better? Would higher writes make a considerable difference?

Laptop will be an HP Elitebook with SATA-III connectivity.

Virdi · 31 Jul 2012 at 21:52

Both are good. The M4 is more popular and has proven to be very reliable so far

ringo747 · 31 Jul 2012 at 22:11

Sounds good. I take it my concerns about write speeds aren't really an issue?

R088ieS86 · 31 Jul 2012 at 22:14

Depends, what is actually running on the VMs?

ringo747 · 31 Jul 2012 at 22:18

SQL Server and SharePoint mostly.

passey89 · 1 Aug 2012 at 06:35

m4 or samsung 830 have good reviews and my m4's have never failed me

ringo747 · 20 Aug 2012 at 22:37

In the end I went for an M4 and have the laptop set up with Win8. I'm not sure if I should just keep all the VMs on the D: drive which is just a standard 500Gb SATA-II drive. SSD is great for the System drive and I could also fit a few of my most commonly used VMs on it but it might be pointless in filling it up with all the VMs that I only occasionally use.

Is there much disk i/o that would give me reason to definitely keep any VMs on the SSD? The spec is an i7 at 2.5Ghz with 24GB RAM.

madman045 · 20 Aug 2012 at 23:34

depends what your using? VMWare workstation, keep the main server clone on the SSD and then the rest of the linked clones on the 500gb drive?

ringo747 · 20 Aug 2012 at 23:42

Going to be using Hyper-V on Win8. I will be running a DC and a few SharePoint VMs at the one time. The less used will just run Win7 with Visual Studio and will be for testing purposes so less resource intensive than the boxes running SQL.

Elric · 21 Aug 2012 at 01:37

I use a 512GB M4 for running a load of vm's on a laptop with vmware, works very well.