VM Questions concerning Malware Testing

[AtlBo]

Don't have one yet, but I am beginning to think of a testing computer for testing malware. I'd like to have 8 GB for the VM to have excellent performance, so I guess 16 GB or better is ideal.

Some question about the processor for me, which leads me to a question about benchmarking. If I benchmark a processor from within a VM container, are the results somewhat throttled? By this I mean does the VM limit processor usage to a certain bandwidth of processor usage? Seems like that could be a whole new set of benchmarks for testers LOL, such as "processor type x performs like processor type x-previous version or like processor type y-old" in a VM. If the benchmark comes close to reading the entire bandwidth during benchmarking I guess this is kind of a meaningless question. I am very curious about it for some reason, though.

I've used VMs before, but I wasn't paying particular attention to processor usage on the main PC at the time. I guess any high end i7 would be good enough for achieving a normal environment for a VM, regardless.

 

[tim one]

About benchmarking, i7 processor should use Hyper-threading (If i'm not wrong) very useful for virtualization so it would be one of the best move. The choice of the Cpu depends on how many virtual machines you use at the same time and how many virtual cores you will assign to each virtual machine.
About the RAM, 16GB might be enough but this always depends on how many virtual machines will be running on at the same time and if you have a integrated graphics card (with shared RAM) or not. Then it also depends on the virtual operating system you install : 32-bit or 64-bit.

 

[jamescv7]

Besides on the RAM requirements, you should consider the processor where the more cores it contains then the flexible of virtualization perform.

So if you have a decent processor and CPU then the virtualization can be optimized easily.