On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 5:07 PM, Lists lists@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.