W2008 R2 Server as Host for Virtual Machines

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Having been messing around with this for a few days - the BEST it seems to be solution for running Virtual Machines on smaller (and larger) amounts of memory is to use a combination of vmware server and W2008 R2 server.

The screen shot shows that the base overhead of W2008 R2 server is just a measly 880 MB. With W7 X-64 Ultimate the base overhead was around 1.8GB a saving of 1GB in REAL RAM (on a 4GB machine) so well worth it.

I also enabled SOUND and AERO themes on the server so you can save even more if you don't need these.

To make a Server OS more "User Friendly" for a home user you can change a lot of the features that make it behave more like a desktop or a normal user workstation..

Here's some tips for this


http://www.win2008r2workstation.com/win2008r2/multiboot-installation

and the available memory used after starting vmware server


Cheers
jimbo

 

[terrabay]

2008 R2 does not install on Nvidia ION machines as it doesn't accept any driver to see a disk.

 

[jimbo45]

2008 R2 does not install on Nvidia ION machines as it doesn't accept any driver to see a disk.

Hi there
That's got to be a bummer but you might be able to slipstream the drivers -- after all Windows 7 presumably installs OK.

Another solution might be to switch LEGACY IDE or similar on in the BIOS (its in that part of the BIOS menu that deals with AHCI). Then your install will see the disks as "bog standard IDE disks.

install the chipset, audio etc drivers after installing the OS.

cheers
jimbo