Question about VMwares and Multiple NICs

eGoCeNTRoNiX · Post by **eGoCeNTRoNiX** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 5:33 pm

Ok.. I'm brewing an idea and have some questions.. I'll be posting another one in another forum, but it's related to the same idea.

I'm looking at running 4 VMwares on a PC. If I was going to be moving a lot of data between these VMWares and other PCs, would there be a need for each of them to have their own independant network controllers? Or if they were set up on a GB setup would that be more than enough? My other questions will follow in another post..

TIA!

eGo

Key Keeper · Post by **Key Keeper** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 10:15 pm

I would assume a single gib lan card/connection would be sufficient. Your going to be limited to bus transfer speed anyways.

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 10:31 pm

the vm's will share the bandwidth of whatever physical NIC you bind them too...so the more physical NICs you add, the overall performance will improve. you are not required to use separate NICs for each vm, of course.

GuardianAsher · Post by **GuardianAsher** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 9:13 pm

Toss a PCI express GB nic into it, and just tell the VMs to use a bridge connection. Each VM will need to have it's own IP on the network, so it'll act basically like a physical connection to the network. Or you could put in seperate NICs and bind each VM to one as has been said. Honestly, if you're running this over 100Mb networks, you should use seperate NICs, because if you don't, all four VMs will be fighting for that 100Mb. But if it's over a true Gb network, you should have no bandwidth problems.

TheSovereign · Post by **TheSovereign** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 5:20 pm

or u can go with esxi free

GuardianAsher · Post by **GuardianAsher** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 4:52 pm

I've played with the free version of VMware, which is now VMWare Server. Server 1.0 was basically the same as VMWare Workstation with a few less features and customizations, but VMWare Server 2.0 is horrible. It is literally meant as a 'server' application. For instance, to view the virtual machine, even on the host computer, you need to download a web-based plugin.

Not to mention a lot of the customization things, such as assigning seperate NICs or sound cards, isn't there. And there is no Hardware Acceleration for video to speak of.

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:15 pm

ESXi is the standalone/bare metal install hypervisor...a watered down version of ESX. i haven't used it, but i'm sure the performance is far beyond what Server 1.0/2.0 can do. i think they cut out Virtual Center from it though...so management is entirely CLI, which would be a pain in the butt for home use.