Best Host OS for VMware Workstation 7?

Question

What are your recommendations for a good host OS for running and using VMs on the same machine. I won't be using the host OS for anything other than hosting virtual machines. vSphere would be ideal, but as I understand you cannot sign into them from the same machine (you have to remote in via vSphere Client).

I'm assuming some strain of Linux?

Thanks in advance!

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 21 '11 at 09:25

2

If you don't intend to use the host OS for anything why use Workstation at all? just use the free version of ESXi, you'll get faster performance and fit more VMs into the same memory.

answered Mar 21 '11 at 09:25

Chopper3

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Because I need to 'use' the VMs from the same machine; its my laptop. ESXi would be great, but as I understand you cannot sign into the VMs from the same machine (you have to remote in via vSphere Client). – Lawrence Wagerfield Mar 21 '11 at 09:59
That's true, you get no actual VM access with ESXi. – Chopper3 Mar 21 '11 at 10:11
You could still run the free vmware server 2 and log in from your local machine – JamesRyan Mar 21 '11 at 10:19

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 21 '11 at 13:40

It doesn't really matter which distro you use, but rather how it's configured. You can take a default Ubuntu distro & turn a lot of things off & it'll be pretty lightweight. If I recall correctly, I remember seeing Ubuntu server's default install taking up only 120MB RAM, so you could start with that & add a lightweight window manager such as Blackbox & you'd have a pretty good hypervisor that way.

I did a similar setup recently with Virtualbox & it ran great.

BTW, shouldn't this be on Superuser?

Best Host OS for VMware Workstation 7?

2 Answers2