Looking for portable laptop which can run at least 2 VMs with ease. RAM 16GB or more, SSD and Intel 10th gen come to my mind. Have been looking at Dell XPS 15/17 but there are some negative reviews about their build quality issues lately, so want to know what other options I should be looking at. Decent screen/ touch would be good too, but i understand that will push the price up considerably.
I have never used an AMD processor but hearing good things about Ryzen 7.
Not looking for a macbook, not within budget anyway. Not averse to refurbished either.
Laptop recommendation for running VMs - 15-17" screen budget $2500
Lskdreams on 03/11/2020 - 23:05
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True and that's where Ryzen is better and cheaper
ThinkPad L15 AMD? Can be configured to Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U with 8C/16T, and has 2x SO-DIMM slots for up to 32GB of RAM. Unfortunately the only screen option is that crappy 250nit WVA FHD LCD.
Yeah the screen is a problem here, i have had thinkpad for few years and it's been reliable.
You really need to think about what workloads you intend to run in the VMs. Will they be running heavy workloads constantly and concurrently? Or are they just for testing/development?
If running concurrently then get plenty of RAM so you can allocate enough to the VMs and still have more then enough for the host OS. I’d say minimum 32GB.
Definitely SSD for quick boot up of both host and guest VMs. How large an SSD depends of course on how big you expect your VMs to be, as well as host OS and your user storage requirements. 512GB at an absolute minimum, however 1TB would best.
CPU again depends on the workload you intend to run in the host and guest OSs. Make sure the laptop has good thermals so it’s not just throttling down under load anyway and turning an i7 into an i5.
I think realistically you need to up your budget, or get something lower specs (but with good CPU) and upgrade the RAM and SSD yourself.
Thanks, VMs will be for testing etc, no heavy workloads on them. 32GB would be my preference too but I'll need to update my budget to 3k then.
Upgrading RAM and SSD myself is an option I'm looking at too, but still need a good CPU and reliable chassis/ thermals.
Avoid Intel go with AMD.
16gb of ram will suffice. But more is always better. It depends on the Application and OS you're running.
Dockerising your workload is another great way to maximise performance on your main OS.
Jenkin being hosted on a NAS is also another great option or you could stick with Azure DevOps.
Problem with most laptop cpus is the lack of cores compared to desktop. So keep an eye on those specs too.