newscorrespondent@charter.net wrote:

>I am trying to configure a computer (yet to be purchased) to use
>virtual (pc or server) and can't figure out how to plan for memory.
>If Vista is used as the host and it can only use a little more than
>3gb of memory and if I understand my reading the sum of all memory
>for virtual machines could not exceed the physical memory available
>or is that the memory available to the host OS?
>
>If I have a 4gb machine can a VM use the part of that 4gb that my
>host Vista cannot use? What about on a 6gb machine?
>
>I need to support Vista, XP, Server2003 and Server2008 when
>available. The servers will have SQL2000, SQL2005 and SQL2008 (when
>available) and at times Oracle and PostgreSQL. The machine is for
>application development and will not be used in a "production" mode.
>It is not clear to me what is the best choice for my host OS. It
>seems that if I host with Server2003 I might be able to better
>utilize more memory, is that true?
>
>I am inclined to use Virtual Server, but don't really know if that
>provides any advantage over Virtual PC, any suggestions?
>
>Thanks

If you use a 64bit version of Vista, you are not restricted to 3.2GB of
accesible memory.

In one of the news groups I go to, one of the Users there is using
Vista Ultimate and has 8GB of memory so that he can have multiple VMs
running. He is using VMPlayer, but if MS VPC2007 can run on a 64bit
Vista than you need not worry about memory confinements . . . (other
than hardware <LOL>).

--
Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services
Web site: http://csdcs.tlerma.com/
E-mail: csdcs@tlerma.com