[CentOS] Migration from 32 to 64 bits

[Les Mikesell]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 5:07 PM, Lists <lists at benjamindsmith.com> wrote:
> >>>>
>>> Hmmm... we have 32bit CentOS 6.3 running both 32bit and 64bit VirtualBox VMs just fine.
>> Yes, if you want to use KVM you'd need a 64-bit install, but for
>> VirtualBox or VMware Player it should only depend on the CPU
>> capability, not the host OS.
>
> While technically true, I can't imagine wanting to do much with VMs
> without the extra RAM space afforded by 64 bit O/S. Really, 2 (ok, 3) GB
> of RAM is *not enough* to do serious work. I'd strongly suggest starting
> with at least 8 GB of RAM. You can do it with the 2 or so that you have,
> but I wanted to scream with 2 GB using VirtualBox for Windows
> compatibility testing.
>
> 8 GB lets me run a host OS (Fedora) and 2 VMs without too much trouble.
> 3 VMs starts to slow down noticeably, no matter how I tweak the memory
> split.

I think the CPU hardware support lets virtualbox give RAM to the
guests even if there is more than the 32-bit host OS could use
natively.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com