[Cialug] Specs for a VM machine?

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Todd Walton <tdwalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Question: In what way does the processor matter to running virtual
> machines?  I'll get a multi-core with virtualization support, that's a
> given.  But should I go for quad core and as fast as I can afford it?
> Or could I save a few bucks on the processor to spend on, say, a
> better video card?

My Dell D420 has a Core Duo (not core 2) ULV (low voltage) dual core
1.2GHz. According to powertop it spends about 90% of its time at
800MHz. But it has the virtualization support. I have 2GB of RAM.

I run Windows XP in virtualbox using seamless mode and it runs
perfectly. As you know, Windows XP runs like a dog if you don't give
it enough RAM. Under 512MB is bad. Likewise if you starve your host OS
for RAM by giving the guest too much everything runs poorly. And for
each, the more ram you give it the better things run.

Two things to consider, virtualbox now has 3d support for the guest.
I'm not sure if some graphics chips work better than others. You may
want to look into that. I like that my last two laptops Intel chips
ran perfectly under linux but I'm really tired of the limitations of
the i965/945 (or whatever its called) video chipset. I'd encourage you
to get a better video card than what I have.

Also, your virtual disk is probably going to be a file on your linux
file system. There are lots of things you can do to get better disk
performance so you may want to allocate some of your money to that. It
depends on your task though. I use virtualbox's shared storage feature
so that my linux home directory shows up as a network share and use it
for all my application data. I was editing video the other day and it
worked fine for me, but this is an uncommon task - usually my needs
are very simple. I have a 1.8" 4,200 RPM 160GB hard drive (from an
ipod).

All of this to say I'd spend my money on RAM and DISK and ensure I
have a better than average video card. Unless you're doing something
very demanding of the cpu anything with virtualization support will
work fine.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter