The following table lists the maximum hardware capabilities that Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) allows per virtual machine when hosted on these virtualization platforms:

Hardware Virtual Server Hyper-V VMware ESX Server

COM ports

2

2

2

DVD drives

4 (IDE)

4 (IDE)

4

Floppy drives

1

1

2

Network adapters

4

Emulated 4

Synthetic 8

4

Processors

1

4

4

X86 Processor

Yes

Yes

Yes

X64 Processor

No

Yes

Yes

RAM

3.7 GB

64 GB

16 GB in VMware ESX Server 3.0

64 GB in VMware ESX Server 3.5

IDE devices

4

4

4

Size of IDE disk

127 GB

2040 GB

Note
You can assign a pass-through disk for more storage.

Not allowed

Serial ports

2

2

2

Note
VMware ESX Server 3.5 supports 4 serial ports, but only 2 are exposed in VMM.

SCSI controllers

4

4

4

Devices per SCSI controller

7

64

15

Size of SCSI disk

2040 GB

2040 GB

2 TB

Number of virtual CPUs

1

4

4

Remote consoles per virtual machine

Double the # of VMs running on the host

1

10

Items in () are unblocked and unsupported in VMware ESX Server.

For the most up-to-date Help information, go to the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Help Online. To find additional Virtual Machine Manager 2008 documentation, go to the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 TechCenter Library.