Hyper-V question...

Hello Guys,

Quick question... i would like to create a test lab (windows 2012r2) at home. Do you believe that a Xeon W3503,3505 or W3520 with 16gb of ram or more will be sufficient for the project?

Thank you in advance

July 28th, 2015 6:18pm

Really depends on how many VMs you want to run on it. For comparison on my home machine I run a core i5-3570k with 16GB of ram, and I'm generally running 3/4 VMs all the time alongside using my machine for personal use, so it's certainly possible, as long as the CPU you're using has VT support (which I believe all three of those you mention do).

Perhaps the biggest difference you can make IMHO is the storage you're using. Using an SSD rather than HDD will make far more of an impact on how it performs. What I do at home is run the host OS plus the most used VM on my 250GB SSD and then the rest of the VMs run on a 1TB HDD, and that works quite well for lab purposes.

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July 29th, 2015 2:14am

Really depends on how many VMs you want to run on it. For comparison on my home machine I run a core i5-3570k with 16GB of ram, and I'm generally running 3/4 VMs all the time alongside using my machine for personal use, so it's certainly possible, as long as the CPU you're using has VT support (which I believe all three of those you mention do).

Perhaps the biggest difference you can make IMHO is the storage you're using. Using an SSD rather than HDD will make far more of an impact on how it performs. What I do at home is run the host OS plus the most used VM on my 250GB SSD and then the rest of the VMs run on a 1TB HDD, and that works quite well for lab purposes.

July 29th, 2015 6:13am

Really depends on how many VMs you want to run on it. For comparison on my home machine I run a core i5-3570k with 16GB of ram, and I'm generally running 3/4 VMs all the time alongside using my machine for personal use, so it's certainly possible, as long as the CPU you're using has VT support (which I believe all three of those you mention do).

Perhaps the biggest difference you can make IMHO is the storage you're using. Using an SSD rather than HDD will make far more of an impact on how it performs. What I do at home is run the host OS plus the most used VM on my 250GB SSD and then the rest of the VMs run on a 1TB HDD, and that works quite well for lab purposes.

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 29th, 2015 6:13am

Really depends on how many VMs you want to run on it. For comparison on my home machine I run a core i5-3570k with 16GB of ram, and I'm generally running 3/4 VMs all the time alongside using my machine for personal use, so it's certainly possible, as long as the CPU you're using has VT support (which I believe all three of those you mention do).

Perhaps the biggest difference you can make IMHO is the storage you're using. Using an SSD rather than HDD will make far more of an impact on how it performs. What I do at home is run the host OS plus the most used VM on my 250GB SSD and then the rest of the VMs run on a 1TB HDD, and that works quite well for lab purposes.

July 29th, 2015 6:13am

Really depends on how many VMs you want to run on it. For comparison on my home machine I run a core i5-3570k with 16GB of ram, and I'm generally running 3/4 VMs all the time alongside using my machine for personal use, so it's certainly possible, as long as the CPU you're using has VT support (which I believe all three of those you mention do).

Perhaps the biggest difference you can make IMHO is the storage you're using. Using an SSD rather than HDD will make far more of an impact on how it performs. What I do at home is run the host OS plus the most used VM on my 250GB SSD and then the rest of the VMs run on a 1TB HDD, and that works quite well for lab purposes.

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 29th, 2015 6:13am

Really depends on how many VMs you want to run on it. For comparison on my home machine I run a core i5-3570k with 16GB of ram, and I'm generally running 3/4 VMs all the time alongside using my machine for personal use, so it's certainly possible, as long as the CPU you're using has VT support (which I believe all three of those you mention do).

Perhaps the biggest difference you can make IMHO is the storage you're using. Using an SSD rather than HDD will make far more of an impact on how it performs. What I do at home is run the host OS plus the most used VM on my 250GB SSD and then the rest of the VMs run on a 1TB HDD, and that works quite well for lab purposes.

July 29th, 2015 6:13am

Really depends on how many VMs you want to run on it. For comparison on my home machine I run a core i5-3570k with 16GB of ram, and I'm generally running 3/4 VMs all the time alongside using my machine for personal use, so it's certainly possible, as long as the CPU you're using has VT support (which I believe all three of those you mention do).

Perhaps the biggest difference you can make IMHO is the storage you're using. Using an SSD rather than HDD will make far more of an impact on how it performs. What I do at home is run the host OS plus the most used VM on my 250GB SSD and then the rest of the VMs run on a 1TB HDD, and that works quite well for lab purposes.

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 29th, 2015 6:13am

I am thinking of 2 vm's (one as domain controller, dns , dhcp , active directory and the other vm will be an exchange 2013). According to intel ARK, yes the cpu does actually have vt-x support. I will a nice ssd and I think I am good to go :D
July 29th, 2015 8:35pm

If I will get an HP Microserver g7 or g8 but not with the expensive xeon cpu , it will be better or worse choice?

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August 2nd, 2015 12:28pm

CPU is not going to be the limiting factor.  Disk IO is.  You're better off spending money on better storage than CPU for your configuration. 
August 2nd, 2015 11:37pm

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