virtualbox.org

Greetings! I am very new to capacity planning and here's my doubt.

I need to run 10 Virtual Machines side by side - The OS's used on the machines will be Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 8.1 Ultimate and Windows 10 Ultimate.

I have chosen the following configuration:

INTEL CORE I7 6TH GEN 4790K
GIGABYTE MOTHERBOARD H97 MD3H WITH DDR4 SUPPORT
SSD 120 GB KINGSTON
HDD 2TB WD
MEMORY CRUCIAL 8 GB DDR4 * 4 ( TOTAL 32 GB )
CHASI COOLER MASTER FORCE 500 WITH USB 3 SUPPORT
COOLER MASTER SICKLE FLOW
CORSAIR VS650 650W SMPS

Will this suffise or do I need anything else?

What applications would be running in each VM? The 4790K is quad core. The host needs one, normally that means you can run more than three VMs without them impacting each other, unless they are doing pretty much nothing. Plus real RAM needs to be assigned, so that isn't in infinite supply either.

I assume that "side by side" means they have to run at the same time, otherwise you have a pretty ordinary requirement and nothing I've said applies.

If they can run at different times then the only thing you need a lot of is disk space.

Many thanks for your reply.

Yes I have to run all of them "at the same time". On each VM, I will be running a VPN, Chrome browser (with about 10 tabs) and some additional software like FTP etc that will be connecting to other remote machines. Very occasionally I may run an IDE, too but not always.

If you think this configuration will not suffise, can you recomment one that will. Thanks.

Sorry, I'm not in a position to recommend hardware. You can presumably Google for that stuff yourself.

You don't get VMs for free, resource wise. They need actual host resources: in fact the original idea was to use up host resources that were otherwise idle. You can't expect to allocate 800% of CPU time and for that not to have an impact.

Your problem is one of simple arithmetic. Look at your current host resources, and work out what each PC would get if those resources are divided by 11 (10 VMs plus the host). That means that each PC gets 36% of one CPU cure, 1.45GB RAM, and 186GB of disk space. Evaluate any other PC in the same way.

I'm not saying it won't work or it won't be usable - you can only find that out with a live test and decide for yourself. I'm saying that simple arithmetic says you have problems.

Very true. This makes a lot of sense. I did Google and read some posts on Capacity planning but I need something beyond that. Someone experienced enough to tell what hardware will support 10 VMs - for eg: Xeon instead of 4790K etc. These hws are expensive and I am not in a position to experiment financially.

If you can share anything else that may help me reach a decision, that'll be great. How would you approach this situation. Any other forums you can think of where I can get hw help.

If it was me then I'd ask fundamental questions, like why you need it all to be running at the same time? - these sounds like standard browser test setups, so the only thing you need at one time is one server and one browser. My next question would be: why all on one PC?

If you can't compromise on these questions then you can't really compromise on price either IMHO. It's server farm time, albeit a very small farm.

The only thing you might consider, is the guests properly will run at the 2TB harddisk, and therefore do not have the speed of SSD.
Consider to increase the size of the SSD to have the guests running at the SSD. I am using a RamCache program, where part of the SSD is allocated for cashing a tradition harddisk, which is similar to Intels Smart Response, and is a considerable speed increase of the guests.
You can use Shared Folders for having the data at the 2TB harddisk.

jorgensen wrote:The only thing you might consider, is the guests properly will run at the 2TB harddisk, and therefore do not have the speed of SSD.
Consider to increase the size of the SSD to have the guests running at the SSD. I am using a RamCache program, where part of the SSD is allocated for cashing a tradition harddisk, which is similar to Intels Smart Response, and is a considerable speed increase of the guests.
You can use Shared Folders for having the data at the 2TB harddisk.

Thanks. I like the SSD and RamCache program idea. I will consider these inputs while I continue looking for the right machine.

mpack wrote:If it was me then I'd ask fundamental questions, like why you need it all to be running at the same time? - these sounds like standard browser test setups, so the only thing you need at one time is one server and one browser. My next question would be: why all on one PC?

If you can't compromise on these questions then you can't really compromise on price either IMHO. It's server farm time, albeit a very small farm.

Thanks!