base mac mini i5 2012 for virtualization

[mlody]

Does anyone use mac mini i5 base model with upgraded SSD and memory for virtualization. Is this machine capable of comfortably running 5-6 VMs (windows server VMS if that matters) at the same time?

I have already purchased the mac mini i5 base today, but before I invest any time and money (SSD and memory upgrade), I am wondering if I made the right choice?
Looking at the geek bench scores, there is like 10k points difference between the multicore performance between the CPU in the base mac mini 2012 and my i7 CPU?
Does anyone have any first hand experience with this matter? I appreciate any help.

Thanks

 

[redheeler]

RAM is a big issue, to comfortably run multiple VMs at the same time you need more than 4 GB. An SSD will also speed up performance considerably for this task. I've run VMs on both an HD and SSD and the difference is night and day (depending on how much HD accessing any VM is doing). Otherwise I'm sure your Mac mini will be fine for virtualization.

 

[mlody]

RAM is a big issue, to comfortably run multiple VMs at the same time you need more than 4 GB. An SSD will also speed up performance considerably for this task. I've run VMs on both an HD and SSD and the difference is night and day (depending on how much HD accessing any VM is doing). Otherwise I'm sure your Mac mini will be fine for virtualization.

Assuming I will have 16GB of ram and SSD, what about the CPU? Will it handle the virtualization? I believe the CPU is only dual core, but it has hyper threading, so technically it is almost like 4 core CPU depending on the workloads.