i have a server that i would like to run some testing on with virtual machines, but not sure what one would suit my machine the best for performance use since i use this box for other things also. specs: p4 2.8 dual core 4gig ddr2 400mhz msi board 300gig windows 3 320gig for storage I have been running M$ virtual pc 2007 and with one virtual pc running an install and some tasks per task manager performance iam sitting at about 1.56gigs in use and the cpu goes from 20-50% in use depending on what tasks i have running Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I've used VirtualBox, Virtual PC (older version), and Vmware Workstation, but I haven't used them extensively. Overall I like Vmware the most so that's what I currently have installed. One feature I like is being able to copy files between vm and host by dragging them from one window to another. (Maybe the others have that too.) Another good feature is you can mod the bios with Phoenix BIOS Editor.
You can drag and drop in Virtual PC once Virtual Machine Additions are installed plus it's a hell of a lot smaller than VMWare its getting really bloated in size
I guess that depends on the mix of OS'es you plan to use. For Windows XP or Vista as host, and any flavour of Windows as guest, I recommend MS Virtual PC, small memory use for the virtualization app itself, and great compatibility, however a really poor (and I mean POOOR!!!!) performance from the IDE interface of the Virtual Machine. If you want to install any flavour of Linux as guest OS, don't even try MS VPC, go for VirtualBox 2.1, also recommended if you want to use Ubuntu 7.10 or 8.xx as host OS, or maybe SuSe 11.x (slight problem with USB support on Linuz, but help avaliable from VirtualBox Website). VMware???, I see no reason to use, unless of course you already have some virtual machines in that format.