I love is a superb using one reasonable computer to set up multiple os's as virtual machines and testing server and workstation os. However, the anxiety about this often is the sheer expense of the memory required.
Hard drive space is absolutely not a major issue. With 1TB drives dropping to sub $100 USD, drive space for. VHD or virtual hard disk drives is not a problem. However, what normally happens is that you simply leave maybe 2GB of space towards the host machine. The host machine may be the first operating-system you put in to the computer. One example is I'll install Windows 2003 R2 as my host computer system. It is actually 64 bit and really stable. After install software such as the free version of VMWare server. This forms the idea its my other systems.
Each guest computer then turns into a new computer. They might so are most valuable when installed while doing so to view the direction they talk with one another. Say I have to learn how to put together and test a network of three servers and a pair of workstations, webpage for myself can install 3 guest server os's and also client workstation systems and run these on the other hand... assuming We've enough memory... this is actually the catch.
You have no need for equally as much memory within the test scenario since you do in the real world, and you also are afraid the computer to perform for instance a dog either. Just like merely had 2 domain controllers running Windows Server 2008 R2 and gave them 1GB of memory each, then installed another version of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 mailbox, hub transport and client access server roles and gave the virtual machine 6GB of memory, and installed two machines running Windows 7 professional with 1GB of memory each i quickly would require as a minimum 12GB of memory all up.
Some test environments may test much more servers and as a consequence need additional memory. Recently Kingmax and Kingston attended by helping cover their 2 x 4GB DDR3 memory modules for less than $149. 00 USD. Consequently if my motherboard supports 4 memory slots, I often install 16GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory for my test server only for $300. 00 USD. A new bargain considering what is important to or might running on this memory.
I have noticed some Gigabyte motherboards supporting 6 memory slots and able to support 24GB of memory. Seeing that will make an ideal virtual machine along with these cheap large capacity 1TB and 2TB harddisks along with a descent quad core CPU!
