Question about VMWare over a network

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

Ok. Right now I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up a small network here at home (using the system I'm on now as a router, maybe a file server too for mp3s and something else, maybe), and would like to mess with VMware some.

What I was contemplating on doing was dropping a windows install into the file server (wherever that ends up), or keeping the one there already, then when I get a laptop (and get a new PC built), I could plug them into the server to handle my mp3 and all that fun stuff.

Well, I'm also a gamer, and on my new system I'm actually debating on going overboard on alot of things (4Gs of DDR2 800Mhz, maybe 2-3 dual-cores, 10K RPM main hard drive, that kind of thing...). Well, I was wondering what the kind of performance issues there would be running VMware over a network. Does it just run on the server and transmit the data to my other system? Does it transmit data to my system, which then runs the program?

If it would normally run on my server, could it be possible (whether this is worth the effort or not, I'm not sure) to put in a large swap partition (maybe 4G, along side the RAM), then have the data transmited from the server and copied to the swap, then run it from swap?

The system I'm using now is a 2.53Ghz P4 w/o ht, 512 RAM, 80GB HDD with some low-end ethernet card I could easily replace.
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Tin · Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2006 7:20 pm Post subject:

All of the work with vmware will be performed on the machine that actually runs vmware.
Nothing will be run on other machines accessing data to that vmware (that acts like a real standalone machine for them)
The transfers/accesses should be a little slower, but it would be only the "server" that will actually work, not the client.
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Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

Can you give me an idea on the performance I would get out of a system like that over a network?

What about the other idea I posted, and transmissing the data to the swap on the other machine, and running it there from the HDD?
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The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.