Folding and VMware

werewolfdaddy · Post by **werewolfdaddy** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:18 pm

Has anyone ever folded using vmware? I currently have f@h installed on one of my computers with vmware and I'm folding on a virtual machine and on the actual machine itself. Both instances seem to be running fine. Has anyone else tried this? If you have, please tell me your experiences.

Post by **dicecca112** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:23 pm

how are your frame times? I would think that would take a huge hit on the cpu and times would suffer. I rather just do two instances on my dual core

werewolfdaddy · Post by **werewolfdaddy** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:37 pm

The first one has taken a hit in frames, but both should be finished by tomorrow, if i can believe what it's saying. I just started it. I'll check on it every few hours and keep you posted.

specs:
AMD 3000+
MSI neofisr2
ATI x800 pro
2 gigs of ram
audigy 2 platinum
3 - 160 hard drives
and a 480w psu in an Antec 1080 case.

pointreyes · Post by **pointreyes** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:55 pm

Since you are using a single core, I believe you should only run one instance.

werewolfdaddy · Post by **werewolfdaddy** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 1:56 am

Yeah, you're right. I didn't believe it would work, but wanted to see what would happen if I gave it a try. The instance in the virtual machine is working fine, but the instance on the windows installation will finish in about a half of a year.

pointreyes · Post by **pointreyes** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 2:13 am

I'm not surprised that vmware could do it. VMware is a great product. However, the processor is unfortunately trying to handle double the load instead of a single load. Then again, you must be rather happy to see how good your processor is in handling the load. Pretty impressive to me.

Post by **Illuminati** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 7:49 am

Folding runs as a low priority process. I'm willing to bet that the VMWare instance is running at normal priority.... so that, in turn, gives the folding process in the VMWare a higher priority than the folding process outside VMWare.

pcrobot · Post by **pcrobot** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:14 am

Wow... I've never seen one saying half a year!

werewolfdaddy · Post by **werewolfdaddy** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 12:08 am

Update. The process in vmware is about 3/4 finished. it will be finished in the morning. The process running outside of vmware has finished about ~50 frames and has moved from 185 days to 160 days. Originally, it said 436 days, but that changed pretty quickly.

werewolfdaddy · Post by **werewolfdaddy** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 10:16 am

The vmware process finished and I've been given credit for it. Interesting result though. It lists the number of cpu's as 3 when I'm only folding with two machines. I half expected it, but wasn't sure.

Since the last post, the process outside of vmware finished about another 50 for so frames, but time estimate moved up to a year.

I'm letting it finish that one out for now. Has anyone tried using vmware on a duo core system?

pointreyes · Post by **pointreyes** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 1:33 pm

werewolfdaddy wrote:I'm letting it finish that one out for now. Has anyone tried using vmware on a duo core system?

VMware works great on the dual-core procs. What's nice is that you can now emulate 2 virtual procs with a dual-core proc.

Post by **dicecca112** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 1:59 pm

send me a link for VMware for linux, and I'll try it. I think adding a third instance is gonna slow my production though

pointreyes · Post by **pointreyes** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 2:14 pm

dicecca112 wrote:send me a link for VMware for linux, and I'll try it. I think adding a third instance is gonna slow my production though

VMware Workstation which is what I use is not free.
http://www.vmware.com/

However, VMware Player is.
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

And VMware Server beta is free to use.
http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

Post by **dicecca112** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 2:43 pm

downloading the serve now but on my schools connection its gonna take an hour so, I'll report back once I get it installed on how well or bad it works

werewolfdaddy · Post by **werewolfdaddy** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:50 pm

How's it working for you dicecca?

Post by **dicecca112** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 2:59 pm

never could get it to work. Linux is a pain to install things with.