Intel or AMD for VMWare?

[Eric Sisler]

Hi Benjamin,

> Okay, I've been trying out VMWare 4.5 at home and at work.  So far, it 
> seems very cool!

It *is* very cool!  ;-)  We have Workstation and GSX here.

> So far I've only tried VMWare on P4's with 1GB of RAM and hyperthreading, 
> and I've noticed that VM will eat up all of the processing time on one of 
> the HT CPU's.  Now, I've been thinking of upgrading my home server (right 
> now it's an AMD Athlon XP 2100+), and am wondering if it would be better 
> to go with one of AMD's 64bit processors or with a P4 with HT.  The load 
> on the server isn't that high typically (mostly just a web and email 
> server), but I want to be able to VM effectively.

If you're watching top you *should* see the VMware process cycle between
the two processors.  One of the servers that hosts GSX here has a Xeon
with HT and I can watch the various VMs cycle between the processors.  I
can't think of any reason why VMware would only use one processor,
unless that's a limitation of the Workstation version.  That said, one
processor with HT probably isn't going to be as fast as two physical
processors, but it is better than just a single processor.

Is VMware supported on 64bit processors?  I vaguely remember seeing
something about 64bit support, but we don't have any here so I ignored
it.  Definitely check the VMware website before going that route.

What kinds of applications are you running in the VM?  Have you read the
performance tuning section of the VMware docs?  You might consider a bit
more RAM as well.  If you're using the VM for any length of time, you
might also run it in full screen mode, as I believe that speeds things
up when using a Linux host.  (Our GSX VMs are running server apps, so
I'm not using it in the same way you are.)

-Eric

-- 

Eric Sisler <esisler at westminster.lib.co.us>
Library Applications Specialist
Westminster Public Library
Westminster, CO USA

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