How many VMs is too many IYO?

[Zellio]

I ask this as I am receiving Windows ME and Windows 98 se tomorrow..

 

[saturnotaku]

One more than you will actually use.

 

[alex0002]

In my day job I work with servers.
How does more than 20 VMs on 4 x VMware ESXi servers sound?

 

[ayeying]

No much thing. But are you really going to use all of it unless you're running a lab or server?

 

[Kashsystems]

The only time there is too many VMs is when your machine can no longer handle it.

On my old 2011 iMac 21.5 i5 I would sometimes run 3-4 VMs with no issues, but I also had enough Ram to handle it.

If your machine has 32gb of ram it is very easy to do.

Now if you are planning to do a lot of cpu intensive among all the VMs at the same time, that is where cpu would be an issue.

 

[maflynn]

There's no real set number. Use what you can, your system will tell you when its too much as it bogs down.

 

[KNNSpeed]

At one point I had MS-DOS/Windows 3.11, Windows 95, and Windows 98 SE all under Parallels on my 2010 MBP.

I say never enough!

(But, seriously, whatever system you have could probably handle those 2 simultaneously, no problem. No version of Windows 9x/ME needs more than 1GB RAM max dedicated to it.)

 

[James Stark]

I'd say never too many --so long as you actually use them. If they aren't being use for.. let's say.. 6 months maybe time to get rid of that image.

 

[csixty4]

I do almost all of my web development work in Vagrant instances. Every client gets its own VM to keep things isolated. There's no such thing as too many!

 

[LostSoul80]

10 would be not bad.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

In my day job I work with servers.
How does more than 20 VMs on 4 x VMware ESXi servers sound?

That's funny! You're a funny guy...

 

[SandboxGeneral]

At the office we're building a whole new virtual environment and I currently have 9 VM's running in VSphere (Vcenter) on a Nexsan with plans to almost double that by the time we're done.

At home, on the iMac, with Vmware Fusion 7 I only have two VM's, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 (Technical Preview). I do not run them at the same time, only one at a time.

 

[MacTCE]

I have 10 running on my Mac Pro;
Windows 7
Windows 8
Windows 10 Tech Preview
MS Server 2003
MS Server 2008
MS Server 2012
SQL Server 2008
SQL Server 2012
Cisco CM
Cisco Unity

I obviously don't run them all at the same time, but I've had 5 open without an issue.

 

[yjchua95]

Hmm let's see....

I have:
Windows 98 SE (just for fun) - 128MB RAM
Windows XP Pro SP3 x64 (for nostalgia's sake) - 512MB RAM
Windows Vista Ultimate x64 (for nostalgia's sake as well) - 4GB RAM
Windows 7 Pro x64 - 4GB RAM
Windows 8.1 Pro x64 - 4GB RAM
Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Pro (for making images for embedded systems) - 4GB RAM
OS X 10.6 Server (for Rosetta) - 2GB RAM
Elementary Luna - 1GB RAM
Ubuntu - 1GB RAM.

All these on a 27" iMac with 32GB of RAM. I only have 4-5 of them running at the same time though.

 

[macenied]

The limit is not how many you have, the limit will be how many you run in parallel. Your computer will tell you that limit.