Hi,

I want to install debian on my laptop as main machine and then start 2 Windows 7 virtuall machines at the same time. Mostly under virtual box.

What hardware do I need that it runs smoothly at least?

What is generally important that a thing VM runs well? Ram? Grafic card? CPU?


Thank you very much.

If you are buying new hardware, I suggest at least a gen4 core i5 with 6 GB ram, the more the better, and at least a 256 GB SSD or a , cheaper, 500 GB rotational disk. A gen5 would be better on power and performance and now that gen6 core I cpus are out, they have lower pricing. Built-in GPU performance since gen4 cpus is great, unless you are a gamer. If that's the case Nvidia is your first choice, unless you want to use open source drivers then AMD is better, but you need to use very recent kernels and Mesa libraries to see any benefit.

On Windows, you'll need two licenses because Windows checks its serial number against other running copies in the local network and disable its activation if it finds another copy with the same serial.

vorbote points out some good ideas.


What has made VM's better is the hardware support built into cpu and motherboard and bios. One issue with laptops is they sometimes don't fully support virtual technologies. The CPU and chipset and bios have to support vm's for best speeds. That isn't to say that you can't get some type of VM to work in the worst case even. It will just be slower. Laptops are not built for speed usually.

A vm tends to consume resources like a physical machine.
Video card would be if you used advanced video. If you are simply doing common soho tasks then video is of no concern.
Number of cores tends to help if use process intensive tasks.
Ram is ram.



Some Core I cpu's are designed for VM's but usually not in a laptop. Guess you could check web sites.


I might be tempted to add in a bit more ram as minimum but your test would determine if 2G would work or have to move up to 24G.

I have a Lenovo thinkpad E555 that handles virtualization extremely well for a laptop.

AMD A6
8GB RAM
500GB HDD

For typical uses, ram will be your Achilles heel. Make sure the system has a minimum of 8GB, preferably 16, and you'll be fine. I have no idea what the other people above me are talking about when it comes to poor virtualization on laptops. Every laptop I've owned has handled virtualization just as well as their workstation counterparts, and all modern laptop CPUs have hardware virtualization built in.

Whout this be enough, I think so:

Prozessor 2,1 GHz AMD Quad-Core A10-5745M APU mit Radeon HD 8610G-Grafikkarte
Arbeitsspeicher 12 GB, 1333 MHz, DDR3-SDRAM (1 x 4 GB, 1 x 8 GB)
Festplatte SATA, 1 TB, 5400 U/Min
Grafik AMD Radeon R7 M260-Grafikkarte (2 GB DDR3L dediziert)
Display Full-HD-Display mit Entspiegelung und WLED-Hintergrundbeleuchtung, 15,6 Zoll (39,6 cm), 1920 x 1080
Laufwerk SuperMulti DVD-Brenner

I forgot to mention that a Whonix Workstation would run as well but this would only need 128 GB of ram cause I would run it without grafics.

Thanks

That should be fine. That processor has hardware virtualization built in and 12 GB of RAM should be plenty to run Debian plus two Windows 7 VMs.

The only thing that might be a bit painful is that HDD. HDDs, especially 5400 RPM HDDs, can't even really keep up with one OS's worth of I/O, much less three. Any chance of moving to an SSD?

Hi,

thanks for the quick reply.
Ok, I never thought that SSD or not should play a role here.

Thanks!

PS:
But I could still upgrade to a new SSD with 256 GB or something like that, couldnt I?

Hi,

You can opt for the Intel's SSD 750 drive as it gives boosting performance.

The HDD has been the bottleneck in a computer since the 90s, and while the rest of the machine has gotten faster by orders of magnitude since then, the HDD is still just as slow as it has always been, which means it's even more of a bottleneck these days. The fact that computer manufacturers are selling machines with quad core 3 GHz processors and 10+ GB of RAM and then pairing it with an HDD absolutely blows my mind, ESPECIALLY laptops where the vibration and shock stresses on an HDD are enormous and lead to MTBF on the order of a year or two.

I won't run a computer with the OS on an HDD anymore, and I certainly wouldn't run three OSs on one HDD simultaneously. You can always try it and see how it performs though, there's nothing to lose but time.

That said, yes you can upgrade. That typically means reinstalling the OS and restoring your files from a backup though, which can be a pain. 256 GB is certainly possible, they have SSDs up to 2 TB in a 2.5" form factor now. It all depends on what form factor you need for your machine and how much you want to spend. I'm partial to the Intel Pro 2500 enterprise SSDs personally. A 240 GB model would run you ~$120.

Hi,

thank you for your time.
I think a 128 GB is enough for me as I really do not need much space for the stuff I do, no games, no movies, etc... If you have another opinion please tell me.

So you really think a normal HDD will fail (MTBF) with data loss or complete malfunction within a year or two? But what about a SSD hard drive, will it probably last longer?

What about the size , does a new SSD always fit?

Thankss.

The hard drive failing regarded laptop HDD stresses. It is unlikely one would fail immediately in a desktop. SSDs are more durable initially, but a good hard drive can usually last longer. SSDs are manufactured to the same size standards as HDDs.

For a laptop it definitely can, it depends on how you treat it mechanically though. If you use your laptop like a desktop, always running it on a hard surface, never moving it with it powered up, etc. then it would last much longer, but that's not typical in my experience.

In a laptop almost certainly. In a desktop it's debatable. In my experience SSDs are more reliable in desktops as well, but the difference isn't nearly as dramatic as in laptops.

You would need to get one that matched the physical and electrical interface for your laptop.

I'd think that a mechanical drive still generally has longer MTBF than an SSD. Unless you drop it.

Depends on the brand, but in my experience with ~40 SSDs and ~150 HDDs all running 24/7, the SSDs have a MTBF of around 1e6 while the HDDs are closer to 3e5 hours under ideal conditions (MUCH less when non-ideal). It's hard to put a good number on the SSD MTBF though because in over 6 years and over a million hours of cumulative run time I've only ever had one failure, meanwhile I lose on average 2-3 HDDs a year.

But I only buy good brands and don't buy ones that use TLC cells.