RAM required for Windows 8 on VMWare

Question

I have been fooling around installing a Virtual Win8.1 on VMWare.
Q1: are there any known complications in installing a 64bit Win8.1 guest on a 64bit win7 host.
Q2: Is 3gb ram sufficient for the guest OS. at some point i tried to copy a very big file to the guest (>3gb) and everything crawled into a halt. My host has 8gb ram but all memory was used up (windows task manager: Perfomance)

Answer 1

When I did the same, I allocated up to 5GB to the Guest on an 8GB host. I noticed the biggest problem with VMWARE is not RAM but rather the CPU. On my HP DV7 with 8GB RAM and a Q4 AMD Phenom all my VMs ran smoothly, in fact I could open 2 VMs on one Host at the same time with decent performance. However on my Acer Aspire with 8 GB RAM and a Core i5 m480 (thats Dual core with HT on each core, meaning 4 threads) the VMs are very slow and terrible. I have tried most tricks to improve the performance to no avail.

My suggestion: Add as much RAM as your VM recommends, but try using a PC with a decent Q4 CPU, not these dual core Core iXs.

Answer 2

As long as you meet the recommended RAM size from Microsoft, you'll be safe. The processor is your biggest worry. I experienced some lag when i ran a Windows 7 on a Core i5 , so u really need a beefy one preferably a morden Xeon Processor.

Answer 3

Q1: are there any known complications in installing a 64bit Win8.1 guest on a 64bit win7 host.
Yes. Installing VM's on a Microsoft host is always and will always be a huge mess. Run VMware hypervisor instead of installing anything on top of MS windows. The bigger footprint of any MS Win OS will kill performance & effectiveness of virtual experience.

Q2: Is 3gb ram sufficient for the guest OS. at some point i tried to copy a very big file to the guest (>3gb) and everything crawled into a halt. My host has 8gb ram but all memory was used up (windows task manager: Perfomance)

3GB is ok for having a basic experience.However the minimum i would recommend is 4GB depending on the uses of the VM. Your host could be having 8GB ram but because Windows architecture on the client OS does not favor virtualisation then you are certainly going to have CPU spikes and terrible to horrible performance issues. Best way around is to install the VMware hypervisor on a 64bit PC or Laptop and enjoy the efficiency of VMware without windows crapping in it's RAM / CPU usage. Maybe if the worst come to the worst you can use Oracle's Virtual Box & install your VM's in there just to fool windows. Anything from VMware ontop of Windows will probably give you a head ache because the two i.e. VMware & Microsoft are fighting for the top position in the Virtualisation quadrant

Answer 4

One common piece of advice is to run the VM off a secondary physical HDD, especially resource-intensive OSs like Windows 8. There are multiple reasons why, which you could easily Google. The most important being the lifespan of your drive and the prevention of data loss from a PHYSICAL HDD crash.

It is NOT RECOMMENDED to run a VM on your primary PHYSICALL system drive.

I noticed a performance improvement after doing so even with a poor i5, 8G, x64-based notebook.

Also, if you can afford, get yourself an SSD drive, it will greatly improve your performance.

For the record, I run my VM on the above specs, with an external, ordinary IDE drive. It suits me very well though, I would much prefer better configuration. On my next upgrade from my 2009 hardware, I will be kicking it. My present for me this christmas