How many virtual processors or cores should I assign to my Guest OS?

Posted by reidLinden on Super User See other posts from Super User or by reidLinden
Published on 2011-02-14T14:50:22Z Indexed on 2012/04/12 11:33 UTC
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cpu

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vmware

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vmware-workstation

I've just received an upgraded Host machine, and am looking to push some of those advances to my workstations Guest OS(s). In particular, I used to have a single processor, with 2 cores, so my Guest OS only had 1/1.

Now, I've got a single processor with 8 cores, so I'm curious about what would be recommended for my Guest OS now?

1 processor/4 cores?
2 processors/2 cores?
4 processors/1 core?

My instinct says to stick with the number of physical processors (or less), but, is that based on reality? I spent a good while looking for an answer to this, but perhaps my google-karma isn't in my favor today.

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