Virtual Machines: What components should I upgrade to improve running virtual machines?

Posted by joshsvoss on Super User See other posts from Super User or by joshsvoss
Published on 2014-08-23T02:00:45Z Indexed on 2014/08/23 4:23 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 418

Filed under:

windows-7

|

memory

|

graphics-card

|

virtual-machine

|

vmware

at work I need to have one or sometimes two instances of a vmware virtual Windows 7 machine running on my real Windows 7 machine. The computer I'm using is Dell Precision 490 from 2009 I believe, possibly earlier. Running Windows 7 ultimate.

Problems while running VM's: The entire computer slows down when a vmware instance is running. Pages take a while to react to a scroll, applications take forever to launch, and programs hang both in the virtual machines and on the real one.

So, what components should I upgrade to improve this? I guess a more pointed question would be, which components will help the most?

Possible options:

Getting 8gb of RAM instead of 4gb
new graphics card
new processors? (Is that really an option?)

My intuition tells me it will be a combination of the RAM and graphics card. There is also the possibility that an '09 tower just isn't cut out for vm's and our business should purchase a new tower.

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about windows-7

Server 2012 DFS New Member Issue

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am trying to add a new member to our DFS topology. We have 3 DCs (VMs - VMware) running Windows server 2012, two servers are located in or Primary site and the third at our DR site. Currently the two servers at our primary site are currently replicating DFS (full mesh) and are working fine. I have… >>> More
error in IIS7 but not on IIS6

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have a website that is we are now deploying to windows 2008 servers that has worked in the past on IIS6 without a problem. It is using .net 2 framework. Most of the website works. Just when we create a screen report over a certain size on the server we get this error. Event code: 3005 Event… >>> More
error in IIS7 but not on IIS6

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have a website that is we are now deploying to windows 2008 servers that has worked in the past on IIS6 without a problem. It is using .net 2 framework. Most of the website works. Just when we create a screen report over a certain size on the server we get this error. Event code: 3005 Event… >>> More
Microsoft Management Console stops working when I add snap-in to it

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I have Windows 7 Ultimate OS. I'm opening mmc.exe as administrator and trying add Certificates or any other snap-in, then while loading that snap-in MMC breaks and displays following message and after that it closes automatically once I click on close button on that message. What could be the problem… >>> More
Handling keyboard and mouse input (Win API)

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
There is a number of ways to catch mouse or keyboard under Windows. So I tried some of them, but every of them has some advantages and drawbacks. I want to ask you: Which method do use? I've tried these: WM_KEYDOWN/WM_KEYUP - Main disadvantage is that, I can't distinguish between left and right-handed… >>> More

Related posts about memory

SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Part 2

as seen on SQL Blog - Search for 'SQL Blog'
Part 1 of this series was an introduction and overview of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory. This part looks at SQL Server memory management and how the SQL engine responds to changing OS memory conditions. Part 2: SQL Server Memory Management As with any Windows process, sqlserver.exe has a virtual… >>> More
SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory - Part 1

as seen on SQL Blog - Search for 'SQL Blog'
SQL and Dynamic Memory Blog Post Series Hyper-V Dynamic Memory is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 that allows the memory assigned to guest virtual machines to vary according to demand. Using this feature with SQL Server is supported, but how well does it work in… >>> More
SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory - Part 1

as seen on SQL Blog - Search for 'SQL Blog'
SQL and Dynamic Memory Blog Post Series Hyper-V Dynamic Memory is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 that allows the memory assigned to guest virtual machines to vary according to demand. Using this feature with SQL Server is supported, but how well does it work in… >>> More
Python Memory leak - Solved, but still puzzled

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Dear everyone, I have successfully debugged my own memory leak problems. However, I have noticed some very strange occurence. for fid, fv in freqDic.iteritems(): outf.write(fid+"\t") #ID for i, term in enumerate(domain): #Vector tfidf = self.tf(term… >>> More
SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Part 3

as seen on SQL Blog - Search for 'SQL Blog'
In parts 1 and 2 of this series we looked at the basics of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server memory management. In this part Serdar looks at configuration guidelines for SQL Server memory management. Part 3: Configuration Guidelines for Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server Now that… >>> More