topic Re: ESXi 4 vs VMware Server in Operating System - VMware

ESXi 4 vs VMware Server

DJMC — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:00:35 GMT

Hi,
I have a Proliant ML115 with 3GB ram and a quad core CPU. I would appreciate your opinions as to which host OS I should install.
I am trying to set up a small domain with a number of windows and Linux server’s (VM’s), primarily for self education and testing.
I would intend having at least one windows 2008 domain controller/DNS server, a file and print server, a backup server and some Linux server’s.

As I said this is for self education so I would prefer to use ESXi but so far, with only two VM’s (win 2008), this is unusabley slow. Should I switch to a Linux host OS and run VMware Server?

Any opinions or experiences would be appreciated.

Thanks,
D

Re: ESXi 4 vs VMware Server

Modris Bremze — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:13:29 GMT

In my opinion a native/bare metal solution (ESXi) should perform better than hosted (Server), because the bare metal solution somewhat cuts out the middle-man (host OS) - more resources available for guests. Provided that I have supported hardware, I would probably choose ESXi.

Re: ESXi 4 vs VMware Server

DJMC — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:33:22 GMT

Hi Skipz,
Thanks for your replay,
Do you reckon that 3Gb ram would be enough to support 4 or 5 VM's?
D

Re: ESXi 4 vs VMware Server

Modris Bremze — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:51:04 GMT

I reckon 3G could fall a bit short for 4-5 guests. Windows Server 2008 alone requires at least 512M of RAM. I have an old HP server with 4G of RAM running VMware Server 2 with 4-6 guests (mostly Linux, requiring between 128M and 1G of RAM each) and RAM resources are stretched pretty much to the limit.