Just bought a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 2GB of memory and a 320GB hard drive. I plan on doing some .net development on it using a BootCamp/VMWare combo since VMWare grants access to the bootcamp partition.
What is a recommended size for a BootCamp partition and how much memory should I give VMWare? Any pitfalls to watch out for? What is your current configuration?
While this doesn't address your question directly, I wouldn't recommend running VS 2008 and all of the supporting tools on anything less than 2GB of RAM.
I ran windows Xp on a mac (AMD 2.4 GHz) and i alloted 1.5GB and it was fairly slow, but it was a file based disk. I agree with the above that you need the ram, especially with vista. I dont think 2GB base is anough for mac and vmware with vista.
For the partition, give at least 40 Gb for os + software and whatveer else extra you need for data. If you can create an extra physical partitioon for the pagefile, that would help too.
I have a 2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo Macbook Pro with 4 GB of RAM. I do some .NET development using VM Fusion/XP/Visual Studio 2005, and have allocated 1 GB of RAM for the virtual machine. It works fine for me, and I have been happy with its performance and responsiveness.
The only real annoyance for me is that by default some of the function keys trigger Mac events, and can't be used as keyboard shortcuts for step over/into/continue debugging functions. For example, F10 triggers the expose function. However, as @Crash points out, the mac keyboard shortcuts can be disabled in the vmware preferences. This works like a charm - thanks for the tip!
@Soeren Kuklau: Thanks for your suggestion, but I don't think I was clear about my problem. I've already configured the "use standard function keys" option. What I was referring to is that by default, F10 and F11 trigger expose actions. And that's my real annoyance: to use keyboard shortcuts for debugging, you have to change default settings.
The only real annoyance for me is the some of the function keys trigger Mac events, and can't be used as keyboard shortcuts for step over/into/continue debugging functions.
Enable System Preference → Keyboard & Mouse → Keyboard → Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys.
I use VMWare Fusion 2.0 on my MacBook Pro and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I'd strongly recommend getting a min of 4gb RAM is you're going to run Windows + VS 2008 in virtualisation.
I have a 2gb RAM for my VM and you do notice a bit of chugging, particularly when you are compiling a large solution, or when running lots of apps at once.
I strongly recommend VMWare over Parallels as VMWare supports 2 virtual CPU's (I think it's up to 4 virtual CPU's in v2).
I'd recommend around a 30gb disk for your VM and I don't recommend BootCamp unless you want to play games on it. Why? It's a lot easier to have a really large virtual disk which is not using it all where as BootCamp will take the space. Also a complete virtual disk is easier to backup/ snapshot/ restore.
The only real annoyance for me is the some of the function keys trigger Mac events, and can't be used as keyboard shortcuts for step over/into/continue debugging functions.
I use VmWare Fusion 2.0 on my MBP with Vista x64. There's an option in virtual machine configuration to let you disable mac-specific-keys. Once i disabled it, i can use F10 and F11 in Visual Studio 2008 without any problems and as soon as i switch back to mac os they act as set in System Preferences (in my case, they behave as standard function keys).
What is a recommended size for a BootCamp partition and how much memory should I give VMWare? Any pitfalls to watch out for? What is your current configuration?
I have a MBP 15", with 4GB of RAM. I use VmWare Fusion 2.0 with Vista x64. I configured the virtual drive to use 40GB (i only installed Vista, Visual Studio 2008 Pro (c#+web dev), MSDN and Microsoft Access 2007. I set 2GB of ram to be used by vm and one cpu. I mostly use Vista in windowed-mode and i can switch back to Leopard very smoothly and vs 2008 experience is really great.
You might also find the suggestions here helpful - elements of this were covered on Stack Overflow a few weeks ago.
Personally I'd say don't bother trying to give the VM more than 2Gb of ram (I've had mixed results giving it more than 1, but your mileage may vary, and my experience is all with VMware Fusion 1). Certainly I'd echo the comments above about not going with Bootcamp, too.