Recommendations for Windows Server and Hyper-V 2016

[ABEL JOASIM MARQUEZ GONZALEZ]

Hello. I'm totally new in the world of Windows Server, and I want to know the best practices for making virtual machines, and about hardware recommendations for the server host.

I want to run a virtual minilab over Hyper-V in my school's Windows Server 2016 Datacenter licence (yeah, I don't know how to make a domain controller, virtual networking, and any of these things, but I want to learn), but I don't know if my computer can run it (and do nested virtualization, and these kind of things). I have a i7 2600 processor, 8 GB RAM DDR3 and 1 HDD 7200 RPM SATA II of 500 GB (Is an Optiplex 990 fat computer). I want to put at least the enough VMs to experiment until make a minimal FailOver Cluster.

I too want to know the recommended vCPU/RAM/Other ratios to best work with virtual machines and use efficiently my computer, or even upgrade it. I'm starting to study computer systems engineering, so I want to improve as much I can in the first's years of my career. Any commentary will be very appreciated.

Thanks so much for your attention.

[#2]

Hi Abel.

Your biggest limitation is lack of RAM with only 8GB, especially if you want to use nested Hyper-V.

The other thing that will hold you back is only having one hard drive. This will limit your disk I/O and have a bad impact on performance when you have multiple VMs trying to read and write on the same disk spindle with each other and that also contains the host OS.

With low memory and a single disk, plan on doing a LOT of waiting.

I would strongly recomend 32GB for any productive testing environment. Maybe more for a nested Hyper-V lab environment.

At bare minimum, I recomend one disk for host OS, ISO storage and some VMs.

Then a second physical disk for additional VMs to share the I/O load.

As you are learning, don't forget that there is a lot of REALLY BAD info out there. Personally I use all the methods of learning that I can find. It's not a pick one or the other kind of thing. I use on line, webinar, CBT, books, and especially classroom.

Best of luck in your search for knowledge.

Ed

[#3]

As per recommendations, you can create Windows 2016 with 4 GB RAM and it will be sufficient to just have only single VM for lab/test environment.

You can go for it.

But if you look to do more testing and create more VMs more than 1, then you need to adjust with performance and can create VMs with at least 1.5 GB RAM on each but still can't create more than 2-3 VMs and keep running them at the same time on the system as it will impact on your system's performance.

Rest things are not an issue.

You can create at least 2 vCPU and HDD with 100 GB.

[#4]

update