Should we install the OS on an SSD or not when running virtual machines?

Posted by Raghu Dodda on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Raghu Dodda
Published on 2010-10-12T16:49:31Z Indexed on 2011/06/22 8:24 UTC
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vmware-server

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ssd

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workstation

I have a new Dell Mobile Precision M6500 laptop with 8 GB RAM. it has two hard drives - 500 GB @7200 RPM and a 128 GB SSD. The main purpose of these laptop is software development in virtual machines.

The plan is to install the base OS (Windows 7) and all the programs in the 500 GB drive, and let the SSD only contain the virtual machine images. It is my understanding that the we get most performance from the virtual machines if the images are on a separate hard drive than the base OS. Is this the way to go, or should I install the OS on the SSD as well? What are the pros and cons?

The virtual machine images would be between 20 - 30 GB, and I might run 1 or 2 at a time.

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