#BEST FREE VIRTUAL MACHINE ON A SERVER SOFTWARE#

In smaller environments you may not have a storage area network (SAN) or a network attached storage (NAS) device to hold the virtual server images, so the host server will be responsible for the task. Either way, always go for more RAM when possible. Other, more advanced setups can determine when identical memory segments are present in multiple virtual servers and map that memory accordingly, allowing more RAM to be allocated to the virtual servers than exists within the host. Some require that a fixed amount of RAM be presented to each virtual server, and that the RAM is allocated in its entirety. That’s especially true if you’re running certain hypervisors (which are responsible for managing all virtual servers) that do not offer shared memory features. The more RAM you have available, the more virtual machines you’ll be able to run. It’s relatively straightforward to oversubscribe CPU resources–or allocate more virtual CPUs to the virtual servers than physically exist within the host server–but it’s far more difficult to oversubscribe RAM. Virtualization host machines can always use more RAM, so get as much as you can, and select the fastest RAM possible. Once you make the CPU decision, the next area to consider is RAM. Think of it as needing a dump truck (which isn’t that fast) instead of a sports car (which is faster but can haul far less than the dump trunk can). That’s because the capability to spread the virtual-server load across more CPU cores typically translates into faster, more consistent performance across all the virtual machines. Generally you’ll start out with only a single server, so try to get the best mix of resources possible within budget.Ī good rule of thumb is that having more cores in the host server trumps higher clock speeds, so if you have a choice between a 4-core CPU running at 2.93GHz and a 6- or 12-core CPU running at 2.4GHz, you’ll be better off with the latter option. The first order of business when approaching a small virtualization project is to choose the hardware. Fortunately, setting up and testing these requirements beforehand isn’t difficult.

#BEST FREE VIRTUAL MACHINE ON A SERVER SOFTWARE#

It all depends on the hardware resources available to the host server, on the virtualization software features, and on the requirements of the virtual server. Some servers, such as database servers, run heavier loads on a more consistent basis, and may not be suitable candidates for virtualization in a smaller infrastructure.

That isn’t a hard and fast rule, however. By taking advantage of this law of averages, you can consolidate a considerable number of physical servers onto a single host server. When they are tasked with work, their resources tend to be spread out among the RAM, CPU, disk, and network input/output, with only a subset of the virtual servers actually requiring significant CPU resources. The reason is that generally most servers run near idle a significant portion of the time. Even though this one server will be responsible for hosting possibly dozens of virtual servers, it will require far fewer CPU resources than you might assume.ĭepending on the virtualization software in use–VMware, Microsoft’s Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, or another package–you will likely be able to run a surprising number of virtual servers on a four- or six-core CPU. The key to successfully virtualizing servers in a smaller environment starts with the physical host server, the box that will run multiple virtual servers.

Best free virtual machine on a server