I need to run several virtual machines on a core i7-920 box with 12GB or RAM and a 256GB SSD to host the VMs. It also has a Highpoint RocketRaid 2720SGL RAID controller with a 12TB RAID 5 array.

I want one of my VMs to run Windows 8 x64, to have access to the RAID array as a native disk (not as networked drives and it needs to run at full speed) and to be able to send files quickly across the network.

Initially I thought I'd try to do this using ESXi 5, but I have been unable to find any working RAID drivers for the RR2720SGL and it is not on the HCL for ESXi 5.

In light of this, I have installed Windows 8 x64 on the hardware and am thinking of installing VMWare Workstation and running my VMs inside there.

I guess my questions are these:

• How does VMWare Workstation 9 perform compared to ESXi 5? In the real world I mean?
• Presumably installing Win 8 as the host OS will give me way better performance for that Win 8 machine than Win 8 running under ESXi?
• I should stick with Windows 8 x64 as the host OS, right?
• If I install a domain controller VM inside my Win 8 box and join the Win 8 machine to that domain, am I insane (I would guess the Win 8 machine wouldn't see the domain controller until it finished starting everything up, but I don't think that matters)?!
• is it feasible to give metrics like this and if so, what is the likely value of x? 25%? 50%? 75%? Win 8 under ESXi runs x% as fast as Win 8 installed bare metal.