So, a bit of an odd one, but it struck me that some of you server admins out there would probably have some pretty solid advice. I work with an analytics package that runs atop Cassandra, MySQL and Cognos, eats memory for breakfast and comes back for seconds, and I need to use this on the move on a laptop with 20GB memory. The more memory I can feed the app the better, as it means I spend less time looking at an hourglass and more time doing something productive. Loading a new dataset take around an hour, so it's impractical to run this on the host machine since I'll be working with a few at any one time, so that means spinning off clones of a gold VM and using those. The laptop is Windows 7 Enterprise x64, this is fixed. As for the rest of it, I have a few options. I'm currently using VirtualBox and Windows 7 for the VMs (7 isn't actually supported, but it works and it was available), but I'm not averse to changing things - I was considering that maybe 2012R2 or 2008R2 would be a better option, or perhaps a different hypervisor. I also use the same app on my desktop at home, which has a little more grunt - I'll be upgrading this to Win10 Pro shortly, so Hyper-V is an option. A big downside of this could be ease of portability between the desktop and the laptop - whilst the disk format is portable technically, I'm not sure how the VMs would like it? And then if I'm using thin clones, I would assume that kills the portability all together (?). Any advise would be greatly appreciated!
I have a lab available for when I'm connected to a reliable tube, but when I'm on the move I need to be able to run it without said tube.
One solution I thought about when needing more grunt combined with virtualisation whilst being protable was to have a small form factor pc running a dedicated hypervisor like esxi and then use a laptop as a thin client. Although if more hardware was an option you could probably just get a second portable workstation laptop to spread the load. If you had a broadwell cpu in the laptop you could use Intelligent memory 16GB (per stick) modules. http://www.intelligentmemory.com/fileadmin/download/compatibilitylist.pdf
All good ideas, however... I've just traded out a "mobile" workstation Lenovo W540 (32GB) for a T450s for the sake of size - my job takes me between the UK and Europe or Middle East approximately weekly and to the US occasionally. This is not compatible with a W540. Losing the added grunt is a small price to pay in the grand scheme of my health and wellbeing. The T450s has 4GB soldered and a 16GB SO-DIMM already, it's a lenovo P/N, but IM is undoubtedly the OEM, since nobody else seems to be making these. Why they decided to solder 4GB an not 8GB, because who buys something like a T450s with only 4GB, I have no idea. That would at least give me 24GB to play with. Any opinions on whether 2008R2 or 2012R2 would be better for trimming back to the essentials, memory wise?
