Introduction and System Requirements
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Similarly, you should provide enough RAM for all of the virtual machines plus the
console operating system. For background on the console operating system, see
Characteristics of the VMware Console Operating System on page 171. For details on
how to calculate the amount of RAM you need, see Sizing Memory on the Server on
page 249.
Note: To ensure the best possible I/O performance and workload management,
VMware ESX Server provides its own drivers for supported devices. Be sure that the
devices you plan to use in your server are supported. For additional detail on I/O
device compatibility, download the VMware ESX Server I/O Adapter Compatibility
Guide from the VMware Web site at www.vmware.com/pdf/esx_io_devices_15.pdf.
ESX Server virtual machines can share an Ethernet card with the console operating
system as described in Sharing Network Adapters and Virtual Networks on page 224.
For best performance, however, you should configure the virtual machines to use an
Ethernet card separate from the one used by the console operating system.
ESX Server virtual machines can share a SCSI disk with the console operating system,
but for enhanced disk performance, you can configure the virtual machines to use a
SCSI adapter and disk separate from those used by the console operating system. You
should make sure enough free disk space is available to install the guest operating
system and applications for each virtual machine on the disk that they will use.
Maximum Physical Machine Specifications
• 8 processors per system
• 64GB of RAM per system
• 64 adapters of all types, including storage and network adapters, per system
• 16 physical Ethernet adapters per system
• Up to 4 Gigabit Ethernet adapters, or up to 16 10/100 Ethernet adapters per
system
• 64 virtual machines per system
• 256 files per VMFS partition
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