The best configuration for hosting a virtual machine with a working environment?

Question

Virtualization

Surely everyone at least once faced the problem of a drop in the performance of working machines (Windows "litters"), which requires reinstalling everything from scratch, or from a backup.
Once again, faced with this, I decided to change the approach to solving it. Instead of installing a working system as the main one, I want to switch to virtual machines. The host OS will be running on the laptop, and the working environment in the form of a virtual machine in two parts - a system with all installed programs (in r / o mode), and a part where all the latest changes are saved. When the virtualka "fails" again, it will be possible to remove the second part and start with the configured machine.
In the presence of a fairly powerful laptop dell latitude i-7 4610M, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD.
There will be 1 working machine running on windows 8.1/10 with MSSQL, VS 2015 and a small set of office software and utilities for work.
I, as a windows user, am thinking about the option with windows server 2012 (with minimal components) as an OS host, Hyper-V / Virtual Box / Vmware (free) for hosting virtual machines. But the host OS can be anything.
From the requirements: so that the host OS does not become stupid over time and uses system resources to a minimum, so that it is possible to have 2 parts for the virtual machine (and the question is to catch up: how to update the first part, when, for example, a new version of the product used was released?)
Has anyone solved a similar problem? Share your experience, colleagues.

Answer 1

As a host, I would recommend Linux, corny eats less resources.
To solve your problem, there is such a technology as snapshots. As with them in VirtualBox - I don't know, in Hyper-V and VMware everything is fine.
After installing and configuring a working virtual machine, create a snapshot and live on it. If you need to update the main part - stop the vm, disable and delete the snapshot, make changes to the main part and create a new snapshot.