Windows Server - average RAM, vCPU allocation?
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What are the average RAM & vCPU you allocate to Windows Server VMs?
I'm not thinking about those that have very high requirements like high performance SQL Servers but rather those mundane servers that constitute maybe 80% of all VMs.
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I tend to start at 2Gb and 2 vCPU, my coworkers tend to think I'm insane for starting so low.
As if they don't know you can always add more. .
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@DustinB3403 said in Windows Server - average RAM, vCPU allocation?:
I tend to start at 2Gb and 2 vCPU, my coworkers tend to think I'm insane for starting so low.
As if they don't know you can always add more. .
But where do you end up?
Or are you saying that 2 vCPU and 2GB is what you end up running most Windows Server VMs on?
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@Pete-S said in Windows Server - average RAM, vCPU allocation?:
@DustinB3403 said in Windows Server - average RAM, vCPU allocation?:
I tend to start at 2Gb and 2 vCPU, my coworkers tend to think I'm insane for starting so low.
As if they don't know you can always add more. .
But where do you end up?
Or are you saying that 2 vCPU and 2GB is what you end up running most Windows Server VMs on?
We end up right where I set them (usually at 2 and 2) with a very few exceptions.
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For 2016, I start with 6 GB of RAM and 2 vCPU. Rebooting takes a bit with less of each. Windows updates are much worse and will take forever to install and then after .net updates, when they come back up, will take forever to complete.
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With Server 2012 or so, we do 4gb of RAM, 2016 and up, we do 8GB of RAM. Start with 2vCPU unless there are performance issues.
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@dafyre said in Windows Server - average RAM, vCPU allocation?:
With Server 2012 or so, we do 4gb of RAM, 2016 and up, we do 8GB of RAM. Start with 2vCPU unless there are performance issues.
Yeah 2012 R2 I could probably do 4GB and 1 vCPU to start. It doesn't seem to use as many resources as 2016.
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2GB of RAM and 2vCPU is pretty good for a non-GUI Windows Server.
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@black3dynamite said in Windows Server - average RAM, vCPU allocation?:
2GB of RAM and 2vCPU is pretty good for a non-GUI Windows Server.
Yeah, non-gui would make a difference. I run gui for all Windows servers.
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@Pete-S said in Windows Server - average RAM, vCPU allocation?:
rather those mundane servers that constitute maybe 80% of all VMs
These are pretty much always Linux VMs. Otherwise, they are the crazy high-requirements Windows Server VMs.
We'll, except the Windows infrastructure servers like ad/dns/dhcp/etc... Then yeah as others said 2-4gb ram, 2 vcpu.
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If a GUI, we tend to be 1 vCPU and 4GB.
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Normally, I start with 2 vCPU and 4 GB RAM for GUI-enabled Windows guests and 2 vCPUs with 2 GB RAM if they're GUI-less. Lots of trivial AD workloads like DC, DHCP, DNS, NPS etc. run fine with 1 vCPU but I found assigning one extra virtual CPU does make updates running somewhat faster. In most cases in my experience where VM CPU usage jumped above 75%, the spinning rust was the culprit, especially if a SAN was in use, it had nothing to do with the actual host's CPU power.
