Advantages of running VMware Server on 64bit Linux host

[Jeff Larsen]

On Jan 24, 2008 9:39 AM, wolf2k5 <wolf2k5 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are there any practical advantages of running VMware Server 1.0.x on
> AMD64/EM64T Linux host with a 64bit OS over a 32bit OS? Is it
> officially supported?
> The server is question is a Dell PowerEdge 1950 with two Xeon 5100
> series dual-core CPUs.
>
> Are there any known issues running VMware Server on a x86_64
> distribution like Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 or better 5?

The primary advantage is that the underlying 64 bit OS gives you
better access to more RAM. Yes, there is the hugemem kernel for larger
accessible RAM under 32 bit, but 64 bit is better.

VMware Server 1.0 is a 32 bit application itself, so there will be
some 32 bit libraries that need to be installed to support it, but it
works just fine.

We run VMware Server 1.0.4 with great success on CentOS 4 (x86_64).
I've been very happy with the results on a PE 860 with Quad Core Xeon
and 8GB RAM. Our VMs are pretty low in their CPU/RAM usage. We have
seen no issues running 5-6 VMs on that hardware. I expect we could
probably double that as long as none of them require heavy processing.
It's mostly things like mail, web proxy, intranet web server, etc. for
smallish offices (20-40 people).

Jeff