Solved! Which cpu for VMware workstation (4-5 vm’s + host)

[Boj27]

Hello,

As above, will a 4 core i7 8565u run 4-5 vm’s okay with 32gb of ram? Either through hyper-v or VMware workstation.

I’m looking at 2 different laptops, one is a dell inspiron 7730 which is proper workstation grade laptop. It has a quadro p3200 and room for up to 128gb of ram and a great build quality/materials, it is massively overkill but the deal I can get on it is a refurbed machine with the full 3 year warranty and room for massive expansion (4 m.2 slots!) and a massive battery, great GPU (even though I wouldn’t really utilise it very much). It also has a 6 core i7 8750h. Cost is £1300

The second option is a dell inspiron 17 2 in 1 with an i7 8565u, 32gb ram. Nvidia mx150 gpu. Cost is £730

If I could save 700 quid or so on the inspiron I will do so, just don’t know if the 15w cpu with 4 cores will be up to the task, or if I should get the 45w i7 8750h 6 core?

 

[Peter Martin]

I like the dell. i think it will be an excellent host and is expandable. they are over 4 grand new.

 

[Solandri]

Do the VMs have to run on your laptop? I run my VMs on my home server (file server, media server, download bot, VM host) whose hardware is substantially beefier than my laptop. I simply project each VM's desktop onto my laptop via Remote Desktop or VNC. As a result my laptop runs cool and gets great battery life even if I'm running a heavy video encode. I've enabled my router's VPN server and set it up with Dynamic DNS. So in a pinch I can still access those VMs when I'm out of the house (rare, but occasionally happens) as long as I have Internet, which is almost always since I can use my phone as a hotspot.

The only VM I run on my laptop is a Windows 7 VM which contains my common apps (mail, Office, Photoshop/Lightroom). And I only do that because I got tired of reinstalling all those programs and configuring them just the way I like them every time I upgraded computers. Now I just copy that one VM to the new computer.

 

[Boj27]

Do the VMs have to run on your laptop? I run my VMs on my home server (file server, media server, download bot, VM host) whose hardware is substantially beefier than my laptop. I simply project each VM's desktop onto my laptop via Remote Desktop or VNC. As a result my laptop runs cool and gets great battery life even if I'm running a heavy video encode. I've enabled my router's VPN server and set it up with Dynamic DNS. So in a pinch I can still access those VMs when I'm out of the house (rare, but occasionally happens) as long as I have Internet, which is almost always since I can use my phone as a hotspot.

The only VM I run on my laptop is a Windows 7 VM which contains my common apps (mail, Office, Photoshop/Lightroom). And I only do that because I got tired of reinstalling all those programs and configuring them just the way I like them every time I upgraded computers. Now I just copy that one VM to the new computer.

I’m going to be using them to study while I work at a bank you see, and RDP and such is most likely going to be blocked I would have thought. I could use my hotspot but it might eat into a lot of my data and it’ll be an every day thing, so ideally I need them to be on the laptop.

I just don’t know whether to save £700 and get the 8565u and whether it’ll handle it...

 

[Peter Martin]

it should be able to handle it, you have 32 gb ram, so your vms can't eat too much

 

[Solandri]

I’m going to be using them to study while I work at a bank you see, and RDP and such is most likely going to be blocked I would have thought. I could use my hotspot but it might eat into a lot of my data and it’ll be an every day thing, so ideally I need them to be on the laptop.

What do you plan to study? Do note that you won't be able to use the Nvidia graphics with Hyper-V. Your VMs might be able to access it under VMWare Workstation, but probably not. Workstation has some rudimentary 3D graphics support, but I'm pretty sure the Nvidia Optimus config in a laptop ends up hiding the Nvidia GPU from VMs. (In Optimus, the Intel graphics is always your primary graphics card, and the Nvidia GPU acts as a co-processor). Heck, I can't even get Intel QuickSync working in Hyper-V VMs.

So if you're hoping to use VMs to learn how to code 3D apps, it's probably not going to work. Though I suppose you could use the VMs to do the coding, and run the app and debugger natively

 

[Peter Martin]

yep. keep dev env separate, and duplicatetable, like a vm already is, with vmware workstation you can snapshot and clone too. do dev/build there and test on your host.