[SATLUG] VMWare Development Server

[R. Tyler Ballance]

On Oct 20, 2006, at 1:21 PM, Alex Bartonek wrote:

> sounds great..but are you going to add more then 1gig
> of ram to run 6 concurrent VM sessions?

This is also something I've thought about, but I've never seen a  
exact correlation between # of VMs/host machine's memory capacity

I'm also relatively uncertain as to how "intelligent" VMWare is at  
allocating memory per running instance, whether it is in gigantic  
blocks at a time, or if its more on-demand than that.

The 'schema' I'm shooting for goes as follows:

An array of concurrently running virtual machines, some test servers,  
some development servers, the differences between them being:
	- Test Server - Only requiring ~256MB ram per virtual machine to  
run, relatively inactive throughout most of the day until a developer  
connects to said machine to test something, running the application,  
making any tweaks and then committing those changes back to Perforce,
	- Development Server - Requiring ~512MB ram per virtual machine,  
these virtual machines are the heavy hitters, the ones that will most  
likely be in use throughout the day, allowing interactive sessions  
for development such as Windows 2003 Server development (as I don't  
have a machine running Windows) or Solaris specific development. The  
development servers can expect marginal load during the day, but  
should be able to perform their tasks as quickly as possible (taking  
precedence over test servers that are running if doable) and their  
speed should be as close to non-virtualized machines as possible.

I'm not exactly sure as per how many concurrent VM sessions I will  
need going on any given day, currently, I see a need for three (two  
develop, one test) servers (RHEL4, SUSE 10, and Windows 2003 Server,  
respectively), but as my needs scale, as well as my need to work with  
others, this may grow in the very near future.

That is sort of the situation I am in currently, I don't see a  
solution not being VMWare-based, but the question is, how powerful  
(staying under my budget of 1300-1800) is powerful enough?

Cheers.

R. Tyler Ballance: Lead Mac Developer at bleep. software
contact: tyler at bleepsoft.com | jabber: tyler at jabber.geekisp.com