Should I Go Virtual?

[mobo57]

My main system is multi boot, XP & Vista 32 and 64 bit versions of both. Tired of having to reboot each time I want/need to change OS. I have VMWare Work Station. Would it be better for me to set up virtual machines using this? Any major performance hits if I do? If I do it under XP 64, my system has the max memory the mobo supports, 8 gig, will this be sufficient?
Any other thoughts, input, ideas?
Thanks

[AllGamer]

you should have switched AGES ago

yes go virtual, super safe
extremely solid
many of the companies i've worked in are using it for LIVE PRODUCTION SERVERS

perfect for LOAD Balancing

so easy to manage resources, if one REAL server gets too busy, you just move the session to another Server on the Fly

and end customers using the server, are not even aware of it.

your REAL server can be any OS of your favourite choice

[Steve R Jones]

From a Friend/Mod on another site:

My long-standing love/hate relationship with Virtual PC is just about over It's just too flaky and limited and I desperately need to be able to use USB in virtual machines, so I thought I'd try VirtualBox, having heard nothing but good things about it. It just blows VPC out of the water! Unlike the 3-hour slog I've got used to to install an OS, I just installed Vista SP1 in 20 minutes And the guest OS seems to run at near native speed as well, though it's a bit early days to be certain.

If you like virtualisation, then you have to try it, especially at the price

http://www.virtualbox.org/

[Midknyte]

why are you dual booting in the first place? that would help us figure out if VM is the best for your situation. You realize that you would need a base OS and then run the other OS on top of it. it wouldn't replace a true dual boot.

VMWare is the most mature virtualization product out there, so I would give it a shot first. Virtualbox is pretty good for a freebie.

You can run VMWare on much less than 8GB of ram. It just depends on how much you want to allocate to each VM instance.

[mobo57]

Adobe Production Studio CS2 does not like 64 bit Windows. Big problems with it recognizing burners etc. CS3 is a little better, but not much in 64. I run 3DS Max and Maya in 64 because they can and will use as much memory as you throw at them.
A 10% increase in speed can mean quite a bit when rendering a scene that takes 20 or 30 hours. That is why I still use XP. I use Vista primarily for gaming and the media center, which I am impressed with. Also my drivers and capture software will not work with high def channels in XP. Vista has no problems at all with it. I think it is because my video card is a nvidia 8800 GTX and my tuner card is the ATI 650 and there are issues with the stream drivers.

[Midknyte]

that could be an issue since the VMs don't really use the full hardware capabilities. the video card is listed as a VMWare SVGA II card.

if you are looking to gain performance, VM is not the way to go. if you have vista64 as your base OS, then winxp would be a VM on top of that. you would need to allocate resources to both OSes at the same time, so that effectively cuts the amount of cpu/ram to each. a multiboot gives 100% of the resources to whichever OS is booted.

[AllGamer]

Adobe Production Studio CS2 does not like 64 bit Windows. Big problems with it recognizing burners etc. CS3 is a little better, but not much in 64. I run 3DS Max and Maya in 64 because they can and will use as much memory as you throw at them.
A 10% increase in speed can mean quite a bit when rendering a scene that takes 20 or 30 hours. That is why I still use XP. I use Vista primarily for gaming and the media center, which I am impressed with. Also my drivers and capture software will not work with high def channels in XP. Vista has no problems at all with it. I think it is because my video card is a nvidia 8800 GTX and my tuner card is the ATI 650 and there are issues with the stream drivers.

okay you mentioned 3 points in here:

1. for virtualization, it doesn't matther what BASE OS you are using, definitely 64bit is best with 8GB ram and either Dual or Quad CPUs

2. Software like the ones you mentioned can run in 32bit virtual OS, if for better compatibility, as you have noticed they are not too good on 64bit

3. application such as 3D Studio MAX, will not run properly on most Virtualizations machines, except VM Ware Workstation with the 3D mode enabled, and even then you might still suffer performance and quality issue.

Applications such as 3D MAX is best to run on a REAL machine on your BASE OS.

Nice thing about VM Ware, you can just copy and paste across Real and Virtual transparently

Same with File transfer just drag and drop.


By the way VM Ware Server is 100% Free, which works just fine for any Virtualization, but in the VMWare Server you lose the ability to turn 3D mode on, which is only provided by the VMWare Workstation.