Linux Host on external SSD with W10 and W7 VM's on 8GB laptop

Hi there

I've seen loads of posts almost flaming me for saying running a Windows VM with VMWARE workstation or player from a Linux HOST OS booted from an external SSD would have terrible performance. (I.e boot the Linux OS and from its VMware menu--> power on--> Windows VM's - all run 100% from the external SSD -- Samsung 256 GB SSD).

Well I've news for you -- running TWO concurrent VM's (one a W10 CU update X-64 and another W7 X-64 pro with Icelandic interface) using VMWARE WORKSTATION version 12.5 runs just fine on an HP Envy laptop with i5 CPU and 8GB RAM - even when using a SATA -->USB2 adapter.

It's better of course with SATA-->USB3 adapter -- but utterly no problem in running BOTH VM's CONCURRENTLY from the external SSD with perfectly acceptable response times whether you use the SATA-->USB2 or SATA-->USB3 adapter.

Sometimes people should really TEST stuff before making "Ex Cathedra" type statements --intuitively they might seem to be right but until you actually TRY the stuff out yourself don't believe everything you see on the Net.

The great thing about this is that NOTHING is changed or touched on the laptop's internal HDD (unless you share it with the VM's of course).

Cheers
jimbo

Well, keep in mind, everybody has a different opinion of what qualifies as "terrible" and everybody has different needs.

For example, when I run VM's, I am usually running a lab to learn something new in the server world. Fooling around in Exchange, doing something in powershell, experimenting with something in Active Directory, testing out some group policy, automating installs, etc. For this, I simply need the systems to run and function. I don't need them to be blisteringly fast. I'm not going to benchmark them, I'm not going to attempt to play a game on them, etc.

I'm run quite a number of VM's off from a 2.5" laptop 7,200RPM drive plugged into a SATA port on a desktop and it's worked just fine for my needs. And I cannot tolerate pitifully slow when i am doing work testing. Let's just say that it's fast enough that it wasn't worth me setting it up on our production vmware servers to run it off the SAN. It was plenty fast enough.

pparks1 said:

Well, keep in mind, everybody has a different opinion of what qualifies as "terrible" and everybody has different needs.

For example, when I run VM's, I am usually running a lab to learn something new in the server world. Fooling around in Exchange, doing something in powershell, experimenting with something in Active Directory, testing out some group policy, automating installs, etc. For this, I simply need the systems to run and function. I don't need them to be blisteringly fast. I'm not going to benchmark them, I'm not going to attempt to play a game on them, etc.

I'm run quite a number of VM's off from a 2.5" laptop 7,200RPM drive plugged into a SATA port on a desktop and it's worked just fine for my needs. And I cannot tolerate pitifully slow when i am doing work testing. Let's just say that it's fast enough that it wasn't worth me setting it up on our production vmware servers to run it off the SAN. It was plenty fast enough.

Hi there

I agree with "perception as to what is acceptable" is a User subjective experience..

All I can say is that response time didn't leave me twiddling thumbs --I believe research has shown that anything over around 1 - 2 secs waiting time gets users agitated. I had much better responce than that.

Once these VM's had booted I could use them quite normally (Office 2016 for example) without the thumb twiddling) - and actually the response time on Office was BETTER than logging on to a corporate LAN.

Of course I wouldn't suggest using these as normal "Production" or even every day VM's but when you need say a special version of Ofice or an Icelandic version of Windows when you are working in a Brussels office with a French / Flemish version of Windows !!! it works brilliantly.

Also good for testing software as well.

I've often posted that poor computer performance is often down to poor HDD's whether VM or real -- these days if using HDD's then large cache with at least 7200 RPM should be the minimum - amazing today people spend loads of USD's / EUR's etc on upgrading processors etc while still keeping pitifully slow 5400 RPM HDD's - sometimes still even appalingly slow IDE ones.

Cheers
jimbo