I would like to ask a question about Virtualization and the performance impacts As the title suggests I wish to VM Windows 7 for a work laptop and run linux on the backend to leverage some of its abilities it has over Windows, more specifically for drive recovery and security. But I would like to ask what impact could I expect out of a VM system? and what limitations performance wise would a virtual drive encounter over phyiscally giving it a partition or own drive?
Thanks
What virtualization software are you planning on using? Also, what are the hardware specs? You'll want extra RAM, at least 8GB, I'd go for 16GB so you've got a full 8GB for Windows. Also, disk subsystem, definitely should be on SSD to remove any I/O bottlenecks. Disk IO is generally the first performance bottleneck with VMs. Most of the time, with VMs you don't partition them separately for a VM, which would negatively impact performance with a standard HDD. Even with an SSD, just create the VM on the local Linux storage and the VM software will handle the partitioning.
You won't have direct access to the hardware, so you may have some limitations on what you can do, i.e. gaming. Since it's a laptop, you may lose some special features that the vendor only provides Windows drivers for, wireless, power management, keyboard utilities.
Finally, depending on the vendor, your Windows may not activate. Some OEMs have extra code that looks for specific hardware in order to activate, if your Windows is now in a VM it's removed from the OEM hardware.
