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New to the concept of VMs and was wondering if there is any merit (performance gains, etc.) to having 1 host machine running several logged-in users at the same time, with each user running 2+ VMs. This, as opposed to a host machine running 2+ VMs out of the same user.

It just occurred to me that there might be some OS-level benefits to structuring things this way; perhaps if you grouped the VMs by functionality into the same users, then you can make user-level system changes that impact all VMs running on it (obviously, this would depend on the OS).

For the purpose of this question, I'd be using Ubuntu, but I'm sure you could make the same arguments (either way) regardless of the system.

Any ideas or input?

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Most modern VM software uses hardware virtualisation which means they are treated almost equally at the OS level unless you specify different priorities in the VM software. You will definitely get some performance gain if you reduce the number of VM instances though. – billc.cn Oct 18 '11 at 16:58
Thanks bill.cn - I figured as much. If you want, turn your comment into an answer and I'll check it for you. – pnongrata Oct 18 '11 at 18:07
Let's see if some VM expert will post a more complete answer shall we? :) – billc.cn Oct 18 '11 at 18:35

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