Re: Best OS to run VM ?
"XP eats less RAM than Vista" is actually an inaccurate statement.
If you do some searches on Google, you will find that Vista and Windows
Server 2008 are much more aggressive in their use of system memory as
cache - to reduce performance delays and sluggishness. With the same
number of processes running, Vista/WS2008 will use more memory the more
you have.
Here is one such article describing Vista memory usage, but there are many:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html
Users need to get past the conclusion that having lots of memory
available that is not doing anything is a good thing - it's not doing
anything to help you! An OS that performs adequately using 2GB out of
16GB available, or an OS that performs great using 15GB of 16GB, and
that is smart about how to dynamically allocate the memory as needed to
optimize use of the system is the preferred approach supported by all
current thinking of researchers in OS design. Microsoft is not the first
to do this, it's a well-accepted design.
That said, I was a XP x64 user on my dev machine for 5 years. With a
new machine, I opted to buy a Vista x64 system, because the hardware and
system drivers that run on new XP boxes many times will not be upward
compatible to future OSs - they are a dead end. This is especially true
with devices, sound cards, etc. So I wanted a future for the box I
begrudgingly went to Vista. I did not plan to stay with Vista, however!
Then I FDISKed and loaded Windows Server 2008 x64 on the box. Before I
did that, I ran all the benchmarks under Vista, then ran them under
WS2008 with all the eye candy and niceties re-enabled/installed. For me,
on average it ran 17% faster! This system had EVERYTHING running that
Vista has -- this proves there is some underlying sludge that slows down
Vista (many think it's DRM baked-in somewhere).
The guys at exo.blog have done the best job of benchmarking WS2008 vs.
Vista in an article "Windows Workstation 2008 - Vista done right?" --
http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2008/03/windows-2008-vista-done-right.html
The idea of using Windows Server as a workstation emanated from a
Microsoft guy on MSDN, believe it or not!, because WS2008 is so stable,
secure, and performs well:
http://blogs.msdn.com/vijaysk/archi...indows-server-2008-as-a-super-desktop-os.aspx
If you do a Google search on "Windows Server 2008 Workstation" you will
find several good sites that explain how to turn on Aero, Sidebar,
re-tweak to emphasize foreground tasks, and more to make it a wonderful
workstation.
This is one of many sites with good explanations of how to set it up,
it's easy:
http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/
WS2008 as a workstation ROCKS, I would never go back to XP or Vista.
My last reason why I think you should consider WS2008 x64, is that it
also comes with Hyper-V. This is VM in a hypervisor architecture, where
even the host is actually a Windows "guest". Hypervisor technology is a
thin layer of software between the hardware and the OS that allows
multiple operating systems to run, unmodified, on a host computer at the
same time. It provides simple partitioning functionality and is
responsible for maintaining strong isolation between partitions. It has
an inherently secure architecture with minimal attack surface, as it
does not contain any third-party device drivers.
VM using hypervisor technology, anyones, is a huge leap ahead compared
to VirtualPC.
All the vendors are going to/offering today hypervisor VM products.
Windows Server 2008 supports it out of the box (RC1 available right now,
RTM by August). If you prefer a VMWare solution, they are moving to
Hypervisor as well:
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/esx3i.html
But your PC must support this in BIOS. But if you use this as your VM
strategy, it's faster, more secure, and more reliable/impervious to
driver problems.
So in conclusion, IMHO the best solution hands-down for state of the art
OS and VM support is Windows Server 2008 as a workstation, using
Hyper-V (or other hypervisor solution) for VM use. To pick an XP
solution using Virtual-PC as a new solution today is using a 5 year old
technology solution that is very dated in security, performance, and
reliability.
Hope that helps!
Michael wrote:
> Mark Natto wrote:
>> I am planning to built a new PC purely for the purpose of running VM,
>> both Virtual-PC and VMware, the hardware consist of the following :
>> Intel QX6700 with 4x2GB on a Asus P5N-E SLI, bunch of drives on RAID6
>> Hardware wise I have no problem, just wondering the best OS to use for
>> the tasks, the host OS wont do anything else other than running VM, it
>> wont be for production, more to do with swinging.
>>
>> The choice is not great as I am no Linux expert, so all are Win based.
>> XP64
>> VistaBusiness64
>> Server2003 as they can all address above 4GB
>>
>> Could you guys recommend the best one to use and any reasons to why, I
>> am gearing towards XP64 as the footprint is smaller.
>> thanks
>>
> Windows XP x64 is the best choice because it eats less RAM than Vista.
> Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V is your second choice.
> If you use the machine solely for virtualization, you may install a
> hypervisor such as VMware ESX Server that runs without an underlying OS.