Anyone have any experience running a couple VMs in Hyper-V (specifically)? Not docker instances or lightweight console only VMs, more specifically full OS’ with GUIs (Normal Linux with a GUI/Windows 10/Windows Server, etc.).
I plan to run 2-4 VMs, all of which will be desktop environment variants; Windows 10, Windows Server 2019 and probably a RHEL instance. Basically, I setup a AD environment and test both a Windows and Linux client in enterprise scenarios. I need to be able to run three VMs with the full “desktop experience” to mimic real life workplace scenarios (policies, software installs, security and AV scans, image deployment, puppet, ansible playbooks, all kinds of stuff really). I’m unsure about the 4 core/8 thread processor being able to keep up.
I currently have a work provided XPS 9500 with a 6 core / 12 thread processor (i7 10750H) and it handles all of these tasks brilliantly. I’ve preordered a i7 1165G7 variant but I’m unsure it will be able to handle the workload. I was pondering just going with a XPS 9510 base model with a 11400H (6 cores / 12 threads) because it is fairly cheap ($1300) after coupon and a 2 year warranty. It also has two NVME slots, memory slots, etc.
Anyone have any experience with similar workloads on the Framework Laptop?
@jma As someone who routinely runs similar workloads/vms for work, the extra cores are going to mean a lot here. Assuming you have ample memory to support the VMS (at least 4-6GB per vm), I’d say you would be lucky to get 2/3 VMs on the Framework/XPS respectively considering the workload you would be putting on the machines, and assuming you provision them for 3 cores each.
If they were more idle I would suggest 3/4 VMs would be doable on the FW/XPS, as you could get away with 2 core virtual machines. They’re not going to be as fast, but they would be stable.
Also keep in mind an ample cooling solution for whichever device you go with. Having so many VMs running at once is essentially hitting the CPU with a constant all-core workload, which means it’s going to get very very hot, very very fast. Significant throttling may also occur under these circumstances.
One more clarification: My memory recommendation above is also based on the relatively heavy workload you described. You can also work with less memory here but it wasn’t really the focus of conversation. 16GB is the absolute min here fwiw.
I’ve ran 3-4 VMs simultaneously just fine on my 10750H XPS 9500 with 32GB memory (with Hyper-V). In fact, it runs them very well while not sounding like a jet engine. It is rare that I will need to run 3-4 VMs, its usually 2 in most cases. I would think limiting the core count to 1 to 2 (at most) should allow 2-3 VMs to run fine on the Framework with 32GB of memory? However, I am curious if the fan noise would become annoying. I’ll simply need to see how it goes first hand.
I use VMWare Workstation and while I like Hyper-V I hate how the two don’t work well together. Still I love WSL so I use both. Personally I prefer how much more compartmentalized Workstation makes it. But I’ve never messed with Hyper V outside of WSL.
If you plan on doing heavy VM workloads, then that max RAM you can afford is advised.
VMWare Workstation is very good, I use that as well on my work desktop (along with hyper-v). Mainly use it to ease ovf/template exports since I do a lot of work with ESXi. I got hooked on using hyper-v due to it being part of Windows 10 Professional, and the features it does have are pretty good (copy paste, mounting USB drives via disk management IN a VM, how it integrates and works with win10 in general, etc). Totally agree with WSL (especially version 2), I absolutely love it! Especially when paired with Windows Terminal. Being able to completely and fully ditch cygwin has been the best thing ever.