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The article describes VMware as a full virtualization solution. "A hypervisor sits between the guest operating systems and the bare hardware as an abstraction layer." Is this really how it works? The hypervisor runs on the bare hardware? I thought VMware was launched as an application under the hosting OS. Then it is able to load guest OS's. So it does not sit between the bare hardware and the guest OS, but rather between the host OS and the guest OS. See the PDF datasheet for VMware Server which shows this architecture.

Is there a different kind of VMware than what I am familiar with? One that runs on the "bare hardware" as described in the article?

Not only not disruptive, but not new. What amazes me is how they wrote about virtualization without mentioning Xen or VMware.

This is not P2V. VMware Converter is the successor to VMware P2V. VMware Converter is absolutely free at this point, with just a few little bugs, and a few missing features. Once officially released it will come bundled with a VMware VirtualCenter license, or free but with a limited feature set. In my experience BartBE and Ghost is a last resort for P2Vs. The converter tool will not only replace the drivers so there is no "New Hardware Found" caveats, but it also has the option to configure the new machine's identity using sysprep. If you're looking to spend money on a good P2V tool, check out PlateSpin PowerConvert.

The first Linux distro I started with was Slackware 9.0. It took me 3 weeks to get it up & running, with the help of a lot of people from LinuxQuestions.org; But as they say: "Once a slacker, always a slacker"

I tried other distros, but none give me the freedom to manipulate my system like Slackware.

In short: If you like (not mind, but like) reading manuals and changelogs before using a new utility and program, then you'll be able to pull it off with Slackware. Otherwise, go with Kubuntu (It's Ubuntu but with KDE as its Desktop Environment instead of GNOME).

The Fedora Core project has a life cycle of 6 months and is a test ground for RedHat; What ever is new, is thrown there for tests; Once stable, it's moved to the Enterprise & Advanced server editions (not free).
And it's really sluggish and you'll face some weird conflicts with some applications.

I recommend KUbuntu, as a free distro. If you want a commercial one where support is ready for you whenever you want, go with Suze, Mandrake or Linspire.

If you'd like to work with both Linux & Windows at the same time, without rebooting each time, consider using Windows as a virtual machine (VMware).

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For your all-in-one needs for programming & web-design, I strongly suggest Eclipse. You can use it for Java, PHP, C++, HTML, CSS, ...etc.

Good luck.

It is REALLY easy. The easiest thing to do is install VMWare Player under Windows - it is a little simpler to deal with than VMWare server (which is also a free - as in beer - download). Then go to http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/ and pick out any one of the many pre-packaged Linux VMs that they have up there. Just open the VM in VMWare Player and you're off to the races. You mayt want to play around with the screen resolution after you get into your VM, but otherwise, it should be good to go.

The easiest distro to play with is probably a Ubuntu Dapper (6.06) one from this month. After you start it up, you can upgrade it to the latest "Edgy" version of Ubuntu (by changing your repositories in the Synaptic upgrade tool from Dapper to Edgy). You can alos create VMs from scratch (go to www.easyvmx.com)

Other distros you'll find up there include Debian Etch (the latest, still-in-process one), various Fedora Core versions, Knoppix. It is pretty sweat-free (except for the download time and the disk space) to DL a bunch of these and see which one (or ones) you like best. In truth, they are all very similar, except for their upgrade mechanisms and the places they stash system files.

If you go to the Mono web site (a completely separate web site), they have a VM with a recent version of SUSE Linux. Though their version is slanted toward setting up Mono (.NET-style) services), it is very nice.

To do this stuff smoothly you should have at least 1 gig of memory (preferably 2 gigs or more), and a BIG hard drive. Be sure to delete VMs you are not going to use.

After you get used to this, you may indeed want to go to VMWare Server, because it has more opearation options and a very nice snapshotting capability that allows you to make wild experimental changes and easily revert to the last good running state of the server, if things go bad.

Me? - I go the other way, and run Linux on my real hardware, and Windows in a VM (using VMWare Server for Linux). I find I don't need Windows that much, and it runs fine from a VM (you do a full install from a CD, same as with a real machine).

VMware is not at all late to the game - they have been doing x86 virtualization really well for almost 10 years.

To create a VMware image from a real Windows box, use the VMware Converter (a free download).

There is also a free importer that converts images from other formats (not sure if it supports parallels).

See the free VMware Converter: http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/converter/

You have just described RedHat. No thanks.

Yikes. This is so wrong. First, RHEL 4 comes on 4 CDs, not one or two. Second, many packages supplied by RH are patched so far that the original developers won't provide support on the mailing lists (Squid, OpenLDAP for concrete examples). Others are maintained by RedHat, which either makes them massively patched, or not patched at all. Neither of the points given really apply to RedHat.

I would rather have Debian release schedules, but have all the packages that are in it. Most of the sysadmins out there who deploy debian do it exactly because "Resistance is futile, you shall be packaged" and because "apt-get install light" works 99.99% of the time.

I'd bet that most of the sysadmins who prefer Debian do so because it's what they are familiar and comfortable with it...such as yourself.

As a result there is a working platform on which to build services and commercial software regardless of what insane libraries your developers have chosen this time. Whatever it is, it can be apt-get installed. In the very rare cases you sometimes have to backport a version from testing, but someone has already solved most of the dependencies for you.

Trying something similar with RedHat quickly brings you into the land of RPM hell. I always love watching sysadmins suffering while trying to support development in a RedHat shop (especially where developers have su/sudo access). It is immensely entertaining to watch the network fall apart and be reduced to a random collection of machines all different from each other and each in its own circle of the RPM hell none being able to produce a release build.

Am I to take it that you are saying Debian based systems are immune to this? Not so much the RPM hell (duh, Debian doesn't use RPMs), but the random collection of machines all different from each other even though the developers have root access? How, pray tell, do you manage that? Block access to the apt repositories?

So from the perspective of someone who has been running Debian driven networks for 6+ years and with 5+ years of supporting Debian as a base for commercial development I can say - no thank you, you misunderstood what brings most sysadmins to Debian. It is the best *nix development platform out there.

First, what does System Administration have to do with developing software? A Sysadmin's job is keeping the boxes running, not crafting applications to run on them. If a system admin WERE to develop software, perhaps he wouldn't use libraries that require such acrobatics his box is endangered? Second, big commercial software developers seem to disagree with you. For example, BEA, BMC Software, Hyperion, IBM, Sybase and Symantec, Lyris, VMWare, Oracle, and Elluminate. These are just software products that either I deal with on a regular basis or came up with in a quick search.

Why, if Debian is the best development platform in existance, would that be the case? Debian Stable changes at least as infrequently as RHEL, so it shouldn't be a matter of code stability.

Perhaps your dealings with RedHat based distributions have been less than plesant, but if you want commercial application support, it's either RH or SUSE. Tools for dealing with RPMs have advanced quite a bit in the last 5 years, and FWIW, I have no problems getting a bo

See http://www.vmware.com/download/open_source.html

See http://www.vmware.com/download/open_source.html

Xen
VMWare
linux-vserver
UML
OpenVZ
Plex86
Qemu
Bochs
lhype

and now

KVM

http://linuxvirtualization.com/ has some good linux to recent announcements regarding virtualisation software on Linux.

Are there any more?

You can do that in VMWare player and VMWare server, both of which are free (as in beer).

http://www.vmware.com/

The problem is such that PG&E is actually offering rebates of about $150 for every physical server that is virtualized. The rebates can go up to $4MILLION for each company. Then there is the additional savings companies will see in reduced power consumption by the servers themselves and cooling.

More info HERE

Have you actually used kde-cygwin? The last news item for kde-cygwin is over a year old, and the headline is, "development of native KDE on windows started". I think it's still a long way off. You'd do better to list something like http://www.vmware.com/.

So MS is making it easier to get XP without a license? First off, you can get the image by running the alternate WGA check on a valid machine (like a school computer) and inputting that code on the machine you want the image for. Then VMWare I believe can import VPC images and then run that image under Linux. You could probably also pull off copying the imaged drive onto a regular hard drive.

The question though is, does the image come with a valid key or do you have to enter a custom one? In other words, how do they prevent someone using this to create a normal windows installation?

If this is a move against VMWare, the joke's on Microsoft. You can convert VirtualPC images to VMWare images using the VMWare Virtual Machine Importer, which is a free download.

Only compelling reason is that Direct3D acceleration only works if both the host OS and the guest OS are both Windows. Info here.

But yeah, if you're not interested in DirectX games your setup is ideal.

DOSBox or VMWare Player + FreeDOS.

Really, though, who still uses dos apps?

Win32 compatibility is decent with Wine, though it has to be the most user hostile piece of software I deal with. Crossover Office is worth the money if you need to run Windows apps.

No, A VM has its own network connectivity just as a real machine. The VM host CAN supply the virtual network switch to supply that network connectivity to the VMs but that is it, as far as the VM is concerned, the OSI model still applies and the host simply provides the physical layer. You could run a software firewall on one VM and use that VM to route and provide network access to the other VMs on the same host if you wanted a one box solution. VMWare encourages and collects "user built" VM images and has links to prebuilt VMs that are for that exact purpose.

So the short answer is... Moving to a VM structure is not inherently safer or provide any additional protection then using a physical machine. You can put your OS running as VM and a software firewall running on a VM on the same VM server just as you could have two separate physical machines providing the same functionality.

The general populace cannot properly build a PC. I have experienced firsthand the results of someone trying to build their own PC, time and time again. There are just too many things that can go wrong. But they should not have to settle for Dell if they do not want. That makes it my job to select quality brand name parts and assemble a quality PC, and if a person wants a $300 PC, then that's what I will build for them. If they want a $600 PC, ok. The more you pay, the more power.

Of course, the other great choice to be offered is Linux, or Windows, or both? Dual boot, VMWare Player, or both? I have now 250 customers, many local, a few not, who enjoy their linux PC and receive tech support and software updates from me, free for the first year, or longer if they wish (for extra $$).

Right now many of my customers are enjoying their new 3D accelerated desktops (video!), and hopefully everyone will have this by christmas. Flash player 9 is also going on select customer desktops, those who are comfortable trying out new software which is not official. All of my customers recieve emails describing services from rhapsody.com, emusic.com, abc.com, new features from KDE and related software (amarok!), and other news of interest.

The main theme here is support. It should not be as difficult as it is with Dell. I think it should be more personal, and that is what i hope to offer. That and, of course, a better quality PC than can be found elsewhere. That, above all, is why I entered this business.. working on Dell, Gateway and Compaq etc PCs for years left me wanting something more for my customers, like quality name brand parts, painless and inexpensive hardware and software updates, and of course, personalized tech support.

An alternative might be to install VMWare and give them a pre-installed Ubuntu image that they can run. In fact, you can get one of these already prepared

You have a few options:

1. Run Windows natively but unplug your CAT-5 cable or disable your networking devices under the device manager. Having no internet access under Windows fixes this and many other problems nicely.

2. Are you really sure that the graphics applications you use require Microsoft Windows? I think that you would be very surprised by how good the support is for most Adobe products, including Photoshop, using WINE.

3. Run Windows and your graphics applications in a virtual environment using VMWare. Unless your graphics applications require advanced, DirectX-based rendering or some such thing (unlikely), then this will work great too.

Hope that helps!

I mean, it's not like upgrading a server-oriented distro where all you care about is if [Apache|MySQL|Tomcat|Postfix|Bind] comes back to life and acts properly on reboot. I upgraded from Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft on my Dell laptop, and it involved some breakage and googling and stuff, but it's not out of line from my experience with upgrading other desktop-oriented distros. At least there's a lot of community resources available for Ubuntu, and since it has a huge userbase, it's fairly likely that someone else has run into the same issue before.

Edgy Eft is definitely worth the try, but if you don't have a few hours to spend downloading updates, installing, rebooting, finding breakages and fixing 'em, then just use VMware Server or Workstation or some other VM package and plop it in there.

I mean, it's not like upgrading a server-oriented distro where all you care about is if [Apache|MySQL|Tomcat|Postfix|Bind] comes back to life and acts properly on reboot. I upgraded from Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft on my Dell laptop, and it involved some breakage and googling and stuff, but it's not out of line from my experience with upgrading other desktop-oriented distros. At least there's a lot of community resources available for Ubuntu, and since it has a huge userbase, it's fairly likely that someone else has run into the same issue before.

Edgy Eft is definitely worth the try, but if you don't have a few hours to spend downloading updates, installing, rebooting, finding breakages and fixing 'em, then just use VMware Server or Workstation or some other VM package and plop it in there.

Have you seen Clock in a Linux Guest Runs More Slowly or Quickly Than Real Time? It can happen when the 2.6 kernel requests more interrupts for the purposes of clock updates than the host can provide, especially if the host is Windows. The kernel will try to compensate for lost ticks, but this doesn't always work correctly. The main solution is to set the clock interrupt rate back to 100Hz like it was in the 2.4 series (requiring a kernel recompile).

This is exactly what they are trying to avoid: complexity.

By assembling their own distro, they gain the ability to offer a complete virtualized environment - which is where the data centers are trending. This allows them to move from supporting *whatever*, into supporting a single environment.

Go look at the VMware Appliances to get an idea of what I am talking about. The devices are complex, but the consistency is identical from VM to VM, regardless of hardware or underlying operating system.

Their support costs will plummet once they start moving their customers over to an "Oracle Appliance". Of course, this savings will be passed along to their shareholders.

Virtualization should not be, but it is, one of the biggest threats against Microsoft dominance, mainly because it relegates the OS to an application workload manager, where the app becomes the most important aspect and the OS is just the wrap for the app.

What they are doing now with their disk format is yet another "mee too" strategy regarding Virtualization. VMware already released its VMDK disk format specification to the open as a well as several other open standards (http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/faqs.html/) so anybody that wants to use it, can do it at no cost already. VMware already released its VMware Server product for free (as in beer), so Microsoft was forced to do the same with their VirtualPC stuff.

What's next? Virtual Appliances (http://www.vmware.com/appliances/), and with them, the rise of Linux in the Enterprise beyond the traditional mid to low tier level.

Of course they'll do whatever they can to combat that.
Disclaimer: I work for VMware.

Virtualization should not be, but it is, one of the biggest threats against Microsoft dominance, mainly because it relegates the OS to an application workload manager, where the app becomes the most important aspect and the OS is just the wrap for the app.

What they are doing now with their disk format is yet another "mee too" strategy regarding Virtualization. VMware already released its VMDK disk format specification to the open as a well as several other open standards (http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/faqs.html/) so anybody that wants to use it, can do it at no cost already. VMware already released its VMware Server product for free (as in beer), so Microsoft was forced to do the same with their VirtualPC stuff.

What's next? Virtual Appliances (http://www.vmware.com/appliances/), and with them, the rise of Linux in the Enterprise beyond the traditional mid to low tier level.

Of course they'll do whatever they can to combat that.
Disclaimer: I work for VMware.

Not only does VMware already give away VMware Server, but Microsoft Virtual Server is also already free. That's not the news.

This is a news story from an uninformed reporter who seems to be confusing software and standards. The announcement appears to be that Microsoft is "relinquishing all license claims on its Virtual Hard Disk Image Format." This, to me, sounds like less of an altruistic move than a competitive one -- because, of course, VMware's image format is already free.

VMWare Server is already free

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

Imagine being able to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows simply by hitting a keystroke?

You mean like with this? no wait, Vista's EULA won't let you do that unless you buy the pricier Vista...

Maybe you could convince the author of this:
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/36 1
to update it to release.

For enterprises wishing to deploy VMware Virtual Desktop Intrastructure this means they will have to use the more expensive licenses.

Does the MSDN subscription license overide the Home licensing so that a developer can perform compatibility tests with VMware Infrastructure?

Is this "Containment Wall" something that can be hacked into working on XP?

Why not vmware? Server is free. http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualization .html

I'm assuming (for this discussion) that you actually want to run Linux/OSX in the first place. [After all, you could just use that Windows license and run Windows (e.g. in dual boot); for running Windows applications, that works pretty well! :-)]

With that said, if you are going to run Linux, the biggest advantages of CrossOver/Wine are:

1) 3D Gaming: Xen/VMWare don't support 3D graphics hardware. (The latest version of VMWare has an unsupported switch you can turn on, but it doesn't work too well.) If you want to use your fancy 3D graphics card in your Windows games under Linux, you'll need CrossOver or Wine or something like it.

2) Performance: CrossOver doesn't emulate or virtualize anything... as a native implementation of the Win32 API, it performs at native speeds. (In some cases, it actually performs faster than real Windows.) This is especially important for gaming, but other applications can also benefit.

3) No boot times (I guess this is just another aspect of performance)

4) You don't have to waste time transferring files from your VM to your real box; one filesystem means the files are right there on your hard drive.

That's the gist of it. Crossover lists out their key differentiators in a much longer table that basically says the same thing.

By downloading and installing it

There is. http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

And more importantly, from version 3.01 it's officially supported (for selected OS versions) --> http://www.vmware.com/products/new.html

Portability depends upon the generation of the virtual machine. VMware's mobility guide can be found here.

I have been a VMWare user for a few years now, as well as MS virtual PC, and tinkered with MS Virtual Server for some time... So far, the utilities i have found for VMWare have been very useful and havent found any for MS products, though i really havent looked. I found this product called MakeVM last week or so. It runs on a live windows box and clones straight to a VMware Virtual Hard drive, over network.

so far i have used this on 4 legacy machines, and moved them straight to my VMWare host running on linux with samba, and had them all cloned and running in 2 days with no downtime. could have been less since i waste alot of time readin these articles..

then i came across this utility diskmount to map drives to virtual disks in the event that i need to do so, which has been rather handy...

I use the free version on windows in my office for testing, on my windows and linux servers, at home on Ubunutu, and never had a problem with it with any guest OS. In addition, the fact that i can boot a guest OS directly from my windows hard drive through my Ubuntu session gives it extra points since i never have to reboot my computer

VMWare is definitely the product i am sticking with...

Maybe this does not apply to you but...

Virtualization is not the answer to everything and no company selling virtualization solutions ever stated it was. An individual assessment need to be made based on server loads, types of load (CPU and disk IO), timing of loads, specialized hardware requirements like dongles or fax boards and similar that do not support virtualization. VMWare has an elaborate set of planning guides and tools for sizing, planning, and moving over from a physical to virtual environment. They also have very detailed guidelines on what should and should not be virtualized.

http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/vac_services.h tml
http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/downloads/ VMware_Infrastructure_3_planning.pdf

That links above are just examples. The planning tools are mature enough that if you tried to virtualize something and it failed, you probably missed or underestimated your actual requirements in the initial planning and assessment stages of the process.

Honestly, we're quite happy with VI3, but we need 3.0.1, due in October. There are a few honestly quite stupid bugs in 3.0 that need to be attended to. The most aggravating part is the license server (based on flexlm, which is usually not so bad). Licensing is the one thing where VMware is going backwards on (although the COST of licensing is quite good now).

There is one, Its VMWare ESX Server http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/esx/ I have used Version 2 at my place of work and its essentially a small RPM based distro maintained by VMware themselves.

Search the Vmware forums. Basically if your 64-bit processor supports hardware VT, you can run 64-bit guests.

http://www.vmware.com/community/index.jspa?categor yID=1

There is a RAM limit; I believe each Guest can access up to 3.6GB. However, having more RAM on the host means you can have more Guests (barring bottlenecks.)

See:
http://pubs.vmware.com/server1/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/h tml/wwhelp.htm

--Check the Index under R (Ram).

--Honestly, if a VM requires more than 3.6GB RAM you probably should be running its functionality on a physical box.

Search the Vmware forums. Basically if your 64-bit processor supports hardware VT, you can run 64-bit guests.

http://www.vmware.com/community/index.jspa?categor yID=1

There is a RAM limit; I believe each Guest can access up to 3.6GB. However, having more RAM on the host means you can have more Guests (barring bottlenecks.)

See:
http://pubs.vmware.com/server1/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/h tml/wwhelp.htm

--Check the Index under R (Ram).

--Honestly, if a VM requires more than 3.6GB RAM you probably should be running its functionality on a physical box.

There is one, Its VMWare ESX Server http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/esx/ I have used Version 2 at my place of work and its essentially a small RPM based distro maintained by VMware themselves.

VMware workstation has some "experimental" hooks that can be turned on to allow direct access to the video card.

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/ws_vidsound _d3d.html

Actually I was able to use the free VMWare player on XP and install Ubuntu 6.06 (http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/5 59), which is one of the Virtual Appliances available on the VMWare site. It was pretty cool.