Solved how much RAM does windows need for reliable virtual Machines?

As in turn windows features on and off

And what is the difference between
Virtual machine platform and Windows hypervisor platform?

sdowney717 said:

As in turn windows features on and off

Click to expand...

A virtual machine uses real RAM. Part of the host machine's RAM is allocated exclusively for the use of the VM while it is running. The more RAM the better, but 8GB is probably a practical minimum. My previous host machine had 16GB, which quite enough to run several Hyper-V VMs simultaneously. My current host machine has 32GB, which is enough (just) to run 10 VMs at once, as I showed HERE.

sdowney717 said:

And what is the difference between
Virtual machine platform and Windows hypervisor platform?

Click to expand...

See here...

“Hyper-V” is a hypervisor that allows you to create virtual machines. The “Virtual Machine Platform” is usually used for WSL, while the “Windows Hypervisor Platform” is used by other virtual platforms to connect with Hyper-V.

Click to expand...

Bree said:

A virtual machine uses real RAM. Part of the host machine's RAM is allocated exclusively for the use of the VM while it is running. The more RAM the better, but 8GB is probably a practical minimum. My previous host machine had 16GB, which quite enough to run several Hyper-V VMs simultaneously. My current host machine has 32GB, which is enough (just) to run 10 VMs at once, as I showed HERE.


See here...

What's the difference between Hyper-V, Virtual Machine Platform, Windows Hypervisor Platform - Pureinfotech

Here's what's the difference between Hyper-V vs. Virtual Machine Platform vs. Windows Hypervisor Platform on Windows 11.

pureinfotech.com

Click to expand...

What happens when you run out of ram?
Will a PC with 8gb ram have problems with virtualization?
How much memory do you need for android emulators? like Bluestacks?

"My host machine has 32GB RAM. My Hyper-V VMs are all assigned dynamic memory, so they get what they ask for - usually less than 2GB when not busy. For a laugh I thought I'd see just how many I could run at once. I got up to 10 before I ran out of RAM. Typically I'll work with 3 or 4 running at once."

".....I got up to 10 before I ran out of RAM"

sdowney717 said:

What happens when you run out of ram?

Click to expand...

The 11th VM I tried failed to start, reporting that there was not enough memory, like this....

Bree said:

".....I got up to 10 before I ran out of RAM"

The 11th VM I tried failed to start, reporting that there was not enough memory, like this....

View attachment 88270

Click to expand...

I was testing google play games beta and bluestack player. On 2 newish laptops one has 32gb, other 16gb, they work very well with android virtual machine. Both i7 cpu

An older AMD 6 core fx6300 with only 8gb ram though, the PC locks up and gives hypervisor stopcode error randomly. So was wondering if it needs more ram or it just something else going on with it.

sdowney717 said:

As in turn windows features on and off

And what is the difference between
Virtual machine platform and Windows hypervisor platform?
View attachment 88266

Click to expand...

The virtual machine platform enables platform support for a virtual machine and is typically used for WSL. It provides the core components for running the windows subsystem for Linux.

The Windows Hypervisor Platform is Hyper-V and it provides the full virtualization suite for creating, running and managing multiple virtual machines.

The Hypervisor Platform is NOT necessary if you want to run only Hyper-V. The Hypervisor platform allows for the running of Virtual Machines on top of the Windows Hypervisor. As an example, if you want to run both Hyper-V and VMware Workstation Pro or VMWare Player together, then you need to install the Hypervisor platform.

Note how the tip for this option verifies this:



More information:

The Windows Hypervisor is a so-called "Level 0" Hypervisor. This means that it does NOT run on top of Windows. Rather, Windows runs on top of it. So, when you enable Hyper-V, your primary installation of Windows is in fact running on Hyper-V regardless of whether you have created any other virtual machines. In that state, in order to run another Hypervisor, such as VMware or others, the Hypervisor platform must be enabled. A few years ago, it was not possible to run both Hyper-V and another Hypervisor at the same time as this this meant running your other Vypervisor on top of Hyper-V. The Hypervisor platform now makes this possible.

hsehestedt said:

The Hypervisor Platform is NOT necessary if you want to run only Hyper-V. The Hypervisor platform allows for the running of Virtual Machines on top of the Windows Hypervisor. As an example, if you want to run both Hyper-V and VMware Workstation Pro or VMWare Player together, then you need to install the Hypervisor platform.

Note how the tip for this option verifies this:

View attachment 88290

More information:

The Windows Hypervisor is a so-called "Level 0" Hypervisor. This means that it does NOT run on top of Windows. Rather, Windows runs on top of it. So, when you enable Hyper-V, your primary installation of Windows is in fact running on Hyper-V regardless of whether you have created any other virtual machines. In that state, in order to run another Hypervisor, such as VMware or others, the Hypervisor platform must be enabled. A few years ago, it was not possible to run both Hyper-V and another Hypervisor at the same time as this this meant running your other Vypervisor on top of Hyper-V. The Hypervisor platform now makes this possible.

Click to expand...

If you are running an android emulator, are you saying both hyper-V and windows hypervisor platform should be turned on?

Unfortunately, I don't know how an Android emulator works as I have no experience with these. Does the maker of the emulator software indicate that this is necessary?

hsehestedt said:

Unfortunately, I don't know how an Android emulator works as I have no experience with these. Does the maker of the emulator software indicate that this is necessary?

Click to expand...

Don't know either, which is why I am learning more about them. I suppose not enough memory, it wont work or it might work a little.
I think one OS runs inside another OS with an interface layer between them.

Bree said:

A virtual machine uses real RAM. Part of the host machine's RAM is allocated exclusively for the use of the VM while it is running. The more RAM the better, but 8GB is probably a practical minimum. My previous host machine had 16GB, which quite enough to run several Hyper-V VMs simultaneously. My current host machine has 32GB, which is enough (just) to run 10 VMs at once, as I showed HERE.


See here...

What's the difference between Hyper-V, Virtual Machine Platform, Windows Hypervisor Platform - Pureinfotech

Here's what's the difference between Hyper-V vs. Virtual Machine Platform vs. Windows Hypervisor Platform on Windows 11.

pureinfotech.com

Click to expand...

Hi there
depends on a) the GUEST --if you are running some Linux VM's you only need to allocate 750Mb. XP guests will also run in under 1GB of RAM allocated to the VM.

and b) the Virtualisation program -- these days on most sensible virtualisation platforms when you allocate RAM for the VM that will be the MAX that the VM will use. In addition some Virtualisation systems e.g KVM/QEMU on Linux hosts allow you also to specify use shared memory.

VM's are so much more efficient these days -- you can get pretty near native speeds if most of your work is in doing "Officy things" and email / internet browsing and file serving / media streaming.

Gaming and stuff that requires really serious GPU / graphics still will run better on a Native system than in a VM - unless you can pass thru to the VM (requires dedicated hardware) to avoid the overhead of "Paravirtualisation" which is a special type of "Virtual hardware" that allows the same VM to run on a whole slew of different hardware.

HYPER-V and KVM/QEMU are about the best systems around these days -- at least for domestic users and they are free -- VmWare wks isn't free although quite capable while IMO Oracle's Virtual box doesn't even deserve to be called a dog.

BTW Windows 11 runs quite nicely on a Linux host (KVM/QEMU) with just 4GB allocated - including the latest insider builds. Don't try to run too many VM's concurrently if your host machine is RAM constrained and don't try and run too many concurrent applications on the VM (and of course on the HOST too while using the VM).

cheers
jimbo

hsehestedt said:

Unfortunately, I don't know how an Android emulator works as I have no experience with these. Does the maker of the emulator software indicate that this is necessary?

Click to expand...

sdowney717 said:

Don't know either, which is why I am learning more about them. I suppose not enough memory, it wont work or it might work a little.

Click to expand...

I don't know either. But this one says 16GB is recommended, though it may run with less.

For the best experience, you should use the emulator in Android Studio on a computer with at least the following specs:

• 16 GB RAM
• 64-bit Windows, macOS, Linux, or ChromeOS operating system
• 16 GB disk space

Click to expand...

sdowney717 said:

"My host machine has 32GB RAM. My Hyper-V VMs are all assigned dynamic memory, so they get what they ask for - usually less than 2GB when not busy. For a laugh I thought I'd see just how many I could run at once. I got up to 10 before I ran out of RAM. Typically I'll work with 3 or 4 running at once."

Click to expand...

Depends on the VMs.
You could try without dynamic memory. To see if any significant difference.
For instance RAM allocation 2GB for lightweight VMs.
Or Min mem = Max mem...

Chances are you will be able to run more simultaneously if you limit the allocation to a fixed size.

There are cases where dynamic memory works flawlessly.
From what I've experienced so far, it will use more than allocated if there is enough available memory.

Needed more ram. Went from 8 to 12gb and absolutely no crashes
It was randomly crashing with 8gb ram.
Next thing is test it with google play beta.

hsehestedt said:

Unfortunately, I don't know how an Android emulator works as I have no experience with these. Does the maker of the emulator software indicate that this is necessary?

Click to expand...

An android emulator is basically a type 2 hypervisor like vmware or virtualbox.

Re. Ram in a vm - it is same as Ram on a host OS. You have RAM and virtual RAM (pagefiles) so of host runs out of RAM it uses virtual RAM from hard drive (pagefiling).

In a VM - it is the same, you assign so much physical RAm and if you need extra RAM it uses RAM from harddrive (the VM virtual drive).

For Windows, the amount of RAM you aasign vm really depends on how much RAM you have to start with. Personally, I assign c. 6 GB as I have 16GB.

With 16GB, I would leave host 8GB and 1 vm 8GB, or 2 simultaneous vms, 4 GB each.

If I had 32 GB, I would probably assign each around VM 6-8 GB leaving 8GB for host

Made an error, still crashes, I had SVM in bios set to disabled. When enabled it crashes.
Did not know it can be ticked on in the features and not actually be on

Solved, it now runs Bluestacks android emulator on this AMD board
Select only Hyper-V
Don't select Windows HyperVisor platform
I got a screenshot of it playing Ants playstore game

Modern VM systems now usually use dynamic RAM -- so the MAX used is the maximum amount you specify not what the VM is actually using at any one time. Some VM systems also can make use of shared memory with the host too -- but that can cause potential problems if you really wanf full VM and Host system isolation (not talking about networking here BTW). Earlier VM systems allocated a fixed amount of Ram at VM start up however much (or little) the GUEST used. --Rather like those bonkers fixed daily standing charges in some places on energy bills where a fixed amount is taken whether you use 735GW of power or 0 Watts. -- that's gone now on things like HYPER-V and KVM/QEMU.

VM memory use allocation is not always (and usually not) a 1:1 relationship with what a physical machine would use -- all sorts of different considerations -- in fact a lot of the paravirtualisation used in typical VM's which are designed so that a VM can be used on many different machines with different physical hardware use many HOST services which means (though at a slight performance cost) the RAM requirements of the VM are much less.

Depending also on the workload of both HOST and GUEST a Windows 11 pro machine running as a VM should perform perfectly well with 4GB RAM allocated to it - for better performance if you can use passthru for the hardware so more host physical hardware is used for the VM then more RAM needs to be assigned - especially if you want to get adequate modern gaming / 3d performance from some really high powred modern GPU's. If you have suffcient hardware - with a load of passthru devices -a type 1 HYPERVISOR running a VM should be able to give almost near native performance - but for typical domestic machines with typical non gaming workloads around 85% - 90% of native performance using paravirtualisation should be achievable.

Cheers
jimbo