5 pts.
 VDI Shared RAM
I am running ESX 3.5 Servers with 32 CPU x 2.3ghz and 128 gig RAM.

I am wondering how does VMWare share RAM? If I were to give every machine 2 gigs of RAM and 2 processors. How many machines would I be able put on this box? Windows 7 with Office 2007. Knowledge workers. Also how many Windows XP machines would I be able to get with 1 gig of RAM and 2 Gigs of RAM?



Software/Hardware used:
ESX 3.5, 8 Quad Cores 2.3ghz, 128gig RAM DL785 G5
ASKED: October 21, 2009  5:28 PM
UPDATED: October 21, 2009  10:01 PM

Answer Wiki:
The answer depends on the type of applications running on those machines. There is no way to really tell until you run benchmark tests on a loaded server. Taking advantage of memory overcommit, you can allocate more than 128 GB of ram to your virtual machines. You also need to consider ESX memory sharing where the ESX server will compare memory pages and free up additional memory by sharing the same memory pages between multiple machines. The actual difference between the number of idle XP machines with 1 GB of ram compared to 2 GB of ram won't be that much if any.
Last Wiki Answer Submitted:  October 21, 2009  10:01 pm  by  mshen   27,310 pts.
All Answer Wiki Contributors:  mshen   27,310 pts.
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