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