Supported Hardware Capabilities

Applies To: Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1

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

Note

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

DVD drives

4 (IDE)

4 (IDE)

4

Floppy drives

1

1

2

Video adapter (Microsoft RemoteFX 3D)

Note

Support for the RemoteFX 3D video adapter was introduced in VMM 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Not allowed

1

Note

There are specific host and guest requirements for RemoteFX. For more information, see What's New in Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1.

Not allowed

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 – 4 MB 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 number of virtual machines that are running on the host

1

10