I am cureently running a windows 11 vm in hyper v as guest on win11 host - this is on a laptop (ryzen 2500u, 20gb RAM) - I use this as server withh desktop to run some software that reuires gui access and I mainly access the machine through remote desktop.
I was wondering if it will be more efficient to run the 2 windows system side by side on bare metal? and if so if anyone can point to a guide on how to do it please...
A Windows 11 host is by no means bare metal - you need another operating system for that.
The Hyper-V product you will need is the free Hyper-V Server 2019.
However, there are several inconveniences:
All in all, the performance improvements are perhaps not worth the headache and the time that you will need to invest in learning a new operating system.
If you really want to run Hyper-V as bare metal (or ESX as bare metal), you will want a server certified to run such.
Then make sure you have lots of memory. Look at the Hyper-V specifications but base machine and 8 -16 GB per Windows 11 machine.
You need ample disk space: 250GB to 500GB for each machine, so good hardware raid.
You would likely need another box for data, as Hypervisor machines are separate. They can go on the same network, but it is usually easiest to network to a third separate machine on the network.
The project will be a big one.
Alternative: A good laptop machine with ample memory (20Gb should be enough).
Then at least a 1 TB (preferably 2 TB) fast NVMe SSD drive.
Host Windows 11, then run Hyper-V Desktop and add guests as you need.
The alternative will work. I do this on one machine with Hyper-V Desktop and another with VMware Workstation and guests work just fine.
The alternative approach is likely best for individuals, and fast SSDs mean that the guests will be fast.