Hello Community,
As the title of the thread reads, my experience of more than 5 years of VirtualBox on Ubuntu and my less than a few days of VMWare Workstation experience has led me to start this thread and clarify on my too good to be true observations.
I have been an Ubuntu user for more than 5 years, my work entails me to use Coreldraw, this being the only reason for me to still be connected to Windows, Not willing to go down the road of dual booting into Windows OS(in spite of having that option) for using Coreldraw, I was let to explore the world of Virtualization, hence came across VirtualBox and i have been using it ever since.
I have conky running on my desktop with the memory & CPU graphs running realtime.
All throughout my VirtualBox use, my VBox VM used to take up the entire RAM allocated to it and my conky would display accordingly, Eg. If my VBox VM was assigned 4GB of RAM for Windows 7 Guest, my conky would show around 6GB of RAM as being used which makes perfect sense.
Recently a few days ago i thought of trying VMWare Workstation on a trial basis ... TO MY TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE MOMENT ... i discovered that an exact same VM configuration being run on VMWare Workstation with 4GB of RAM when booted into show very little RAM being consumed.
My conky desktop shows that my total RAM consumption with my 4GB VMWare VM running Windows 7 actively with Coreldraw, Adobe Photoshop and Picassa album being opened in it show no more than 15%(of my total of 16GB RAM) of memory usage with RAM being used displayed as less than 2.5GB, at times going as high as 3GB, never more than 3.5GB.
The response of the Windows 7 guest running on VMWare Workstation is soooooo smooth that i just can't believe it, i am just not convinced that things are running waaaaaaay smoother MOST IMPORTANTLY WITH LESS THAN 3.5GB OF total RAM being used by both the Host and Guest machines simultaneously.
assuming it must be conky mis-reporting, i checked inside Ubuntu System Monitor, and that confirms the readings displayed by the Conky desktop widget.
HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE ?
Is VMWare equipped to take only that much RAM that it requires and not Block the total RAM allocated to it in the VM settings, Atleast VirtualBox does seem to do so, blocking the entire RAM allocated to it. In this case 4GB with 1.5-2GB which is being used by the Ubuntu Host totalling to 5-6GB memory usage display on Conky and the same confirmed on Ubuntu System Monitor as well, I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT THE RESPONSIVENESS OF Windows 7 is not as smooth on VBox VM as being experienced on VMWare currently ... JUST CAN'T BELIEVE IT.
VMWare VM : "Host + Guest" RAM Consumption = not more than 3.5 GB ----------- JUST UNBELIEVABLE !!! (Experience Waaaaaaaaaay Smooother)
VBox VM : "Host + Guest" RAM Consumption = 5-6 GB ------------------------------- MAKES SENSE (normal as my experience of more than 5 yrs with it)
IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE ???
thanks in advance for any clarifications.
As the title of the thread reads, my experience of more than 5 years of VirtualBox on Ubuntu and my less than a few days of VMWare Workstation experience has led me to start this thread and clarify on my too good to be true observations.
I have been an Ubuntu user for more than 5 years, my work entails me to use Coreldraw, this being the only reason for me to still be connected to Windows, Not willing to go down the road of dual booting into Windows OS(in spite of having that option) for using Coreldraw, I was let to explore the world of Virtualization, hence came across VirtualBox and i have been using it ever since.
I have conky running on my desktop with the memory & CPU graphs running realtime.
All throughout my VirtualBox use, my VBox VM used to take up the entire RAM allocated to it and my conky would display accordingly, Eg. If my VBox VM was assigned 4GB of RAM for Windows 7 Guest, my conky would show around 6GB of RAM as being used which makes perfect sense.
Recently a few days ago i thought of trying VMWare Workstation on a trial basis ... TO MY TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE MOMENT ... i discovered that an exact same VM configuration being run on VMWare Workstation with 4GB of RAM when booted into show very little RAM being consumed.
My conky desktop shows that my total RAM consumption with my 4GB VMWare VM running Windows 7 actively with Coreldraw, Adobe Photoshop and Picassa album being opened in it show no more than 15%(of my total of 16GB RAM) of memory usage with RAM being used displayed as less than 2.5GB, at times going as high as 3GB, never more than 3.5GB.
The response of the Windows 7 guest running on VMWare Workstation is soooooo smooth that i just can't believe it, i am just not convinced that things are running waaaaaaay smoother MOST IMPORTANTLY WITH LESS THAN 3.5GB OF total RAM being used by both the Host and Guest machines simultaneously.
assuming it must be conky mis-reporting, i checked inside Ubuntu System Monitor, and that confirms the readings displayed by the Conky desktop widget.
HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE ?
Is VMWare equipped to take only that much RAM that it requires and not Block the total RAM allocated to it in the VM settings, Atleast VirtualBox does seem to do so, blocking the entire RAM allocated to it. In this case 4GB with 1.5-2GB which is being used by the Ubuntu Host totalling to 5-6GB memory usage display on Conky and the same confirmed on Ubuntu System Monitor as well, I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT THE RESPONSIVENESS OF Windows 7 is not as smooth on VBox VM as being experienced on VMWare currently ... JUST CAN'T BELIEVE IT.
VMWare VM : "Host + Guest" RAM Consumption = not more than 3.5 GB ----------- JUST UNBELIEVABLE !!! (Experience Waaaaaaaaaay Smooother)
VBox VM : "Host + Guest" RAM Consumption = 5-6 GB ------------------------------- MAKES SENSE (normal as my experience of more than 5 yrs with it)
IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE ???
thanks in advance for any clarifications.