I currently own a MacBook Pro with 4gb memory and I am having difficulties virtualizing multiple Windows machines without running into major performance issues. So I am looking at getting one of the new iMacs but I am trying to get a feel for the configuration that I should be looking at, the whole thing boils down to cost. Does anyone have a good idea on features, memory, CPU etc that would be good for vitualuzation of multiple machines and still allow me some flexibility in pricing and growth in the system. Thank you in advance.
From what I've learned over the last few months with Parallels 4 and 5, I'd say you'll need memory - lots of it - and as many cores as you can lay your hand on. Per VM I'd say you'll need about 1 Gig of Ram and 1 processor. The GB per VM doesn't all go against the VM (some is needed for overhead, Parallels itself, the graphics card, sound etc). Your Mac will also need some Ram to run. If you run into memory issues, your Mac will start to slosh its memory between Ram and the swap file a lot. That's no fun. So with the new big 8 core iMac you should be ok for up to 8 VM's if you plug at least 10 GB of Ram into it and don't assign more than 1 GB to each VM. Oh, get a *fast* hard drive, too.
That was what I thought and learned as well so far so I am glad that I wa not that far off. I was also speaking to another Mac enthusest and also concurrs and is pushing the new i5 or i7's. Thanks again.
