I would like to virtualize 2-3 windows 7 computers

drahlz

Estimable
Aug 25, 2014
14
0
4,560
I currently have 3 windows 7 computers setup and running 24/7. I have a fairly high spec computer that I believe will be more than sufficient to run all 3 on one machine. I am looking for the best options to do this.. preferably something that is free or cheap and fairly easy to use. My main computer has an i7-4790k and 16GB of ram. The computers I would like to convert to virtual machines are both currently showing ram usage under 2gb and cpu usage is very low.

Another option I am considering is keeping my main computer as is.. I do use it for gaming and this might put a bit of strain on it running 2 virtual machines and also some more demanding games. I could use my i5-3570k with 8gb of ram and possibly load Mint OS and run both of the machines as virtual machines on there if that would make more sense.
 
For Windows host, you have options of VMWare Player, and VirtualBox. If your Windows is of Pro version, you can also check WinXP mode / VirtualPC (for Windows 7), or Hyper-V (for Win8 / 10).

On Linux host, VirtualBox runs quite well.

I would not mix competitive gaming with VM hosting. YOu should be able to limit the resources these VM are using and see how this affect your gaming.
 

drahlz

Estimable
Aug 25, 2014
14
0
4,560


Took a while to hear back so I already went ahead and made a choice to see how it would work. Decided to run everything on my gaming computer (I don't game competitively by any means) currently mostly World or Warcraft or other older games. Realized I don't need both of the VM's running 100% of the time just my Plex server which I gave 2gb of ram. Right now with that running I have about 6gb of ram used so I have 10 free which will be much more than I will need for any games I run. Also cpu is running around 7% pretty consistently so that shouldn't be a problem either.

Worst case scenario I guess I move my 4tb harddrive back to a different computer and setup my VM's on there.

Thanks for taking the time to reply!