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VMWare Rolls Out Their Largest Product Release
opieum writes "VMware has launched Virtual Infrastructure 3.0 today which includes ESX 3.0 and a number of management utilities." Relatedly Jane Walker writes "SearchOpenSource has two authors that try to show why VMware ESX Server is miles ahead of Xen and Virtual Server. Discover what to watch out for when running ESX Server and how to avoid sprawl in your virtual data center."
and a few dollars ahead too!
... their new not-so-subtle advertising section.
A year ago i used the trial vmware workstation for a while, i liked it, but i wasn't willing to pay the cash to keep it. Just recently VMWare released VMWare Server which works on my XP Pro machine and appears to be a rebranded VMWare Server 5.0 that I used a year ago, for free.
It was thier GSX server product rebranded.
WORD
We've started to use more and more virtualisation systems at work -- the vmware solution is by far the most sophisticated and performant we've encountered - and the upgrade path to ESX server is always handy. Clusters are a virtual (a-ha!) doddle to work with once you pretty much virtualise everything (and the performance isn't bad either!).
Roll on more vmware products to make my life a happier one!
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
Then was their GSX Server equal to their workstation product? And if so why are they charging $189 for a workstation product when Server now does the same thing?
Vmware does have a player version that will allow you to run vmware virtual machines. The only thing is you have to have a licensed version to create the virtual machines. It helps if you have a friend with a legit version to built VM's for you.
In Server you can create/edit the machines for free just as in workstation.
By far, and I dont work for EMC or VMware, ESX server and virtual center are Bad Ass. There is nothing greater than 0 to minimal hardware downtime. Finally getting the moneys worth out of the hardware. Being able to place a box in "undoable mode" rocks! (think "oops that patch just hosed my sql cluster" "ok, i'm fine again"). Being able to deploy the same server via image and deploy one in 30 min. Adding disks on the fly and growing disks with 5 or less min of downtime. Facts: 1. ESX Servers are mammals. 2. ESX Servers fight ALL the time. 3. The purpose of the ESX server is to flip out and kill people. I once saw an ESX server flip out when a physical server dropped a flopy disk, and the ESX server killed the whole data center! (insert tounge in cheek) Not to mention the countless Beowulf clusters, countless.
I suspect vmware server must have a clean-room reimplementation of a lot of features from gsx/workstation - and testing on people who want vmware for free is a great plan -- GSX/ESX still keeps its high reliability and you can work the bugs out of the new code so only the highest quality parts are committed into GSX/ESX's codebase
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
What's virutally?
Because M$ gave away thier VM product for free.
I still don't get why everyone is into vitualization of servers. Just one thought; if you have to take down the server inquestion for something like a server relocation; you take down 5 (virtual servers). What happens why you fry a motherboard? Not one but 5 servers now go down.
Now, I know what you are thinking; there should be redundant servers. A lot of small shops don't have the funds for that. This is just going to temp some of the worst habbits in the IT world. I am just waiting to walk into one shop and find that they have all redundant (virtual ) server on the same physical server.
Another day of happiness in IT.
Enjoy.
It's the management support that vmware provides. Xen is ok, but it doesn't have the performance or the reliability of vmware. And while it's relatively easy to configure a guest os in xen, but trust me, when you're working on a hundred-machine cluster you really come to appreciate virtual centre
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
You can download prebuilt VM's from VMware for free i.e. BDS, linux, etc.
People looking to manage VMMs across a range of vendors (VMware, Xen and Microsoft) should take a look at Cassatt. In particular the XVM product.
No. Workstation is geared to developers/testers. For example it supports VM teaming and multiple undo snapshots.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Look in the menu bar on the left for vendors, AMD.. That is there new advertising section, and there is nothing subtle about it... AMD
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
I just replaced 2 old servers, 1 running Windows 2000 server, and one running Linux. I had an IBM X31 Pentium M 1.3x ghz notebook laying around, that had a lot of memory and a 7200rpm 2.5" drive it it. I installed a SATA PCMCIA card and am running my virtual machines off of an external SATA enclosure and drive.
Now I know what you all are saying, but the X31 works great, and is plenty beefy for the 2 servers it is replacing (a Pentium III 500mhz and an AMD 1ghz). The great thing about it is, it is absolutely quiet, it has its own 12" screen, keyboard and mouse (track-pad), and it has a built in UPS system. I have it hooked up the the same UPS that was running the other 2 servers, so if the power goes out, this thing will probably run a week without power.
The SATA external drive is fast, so that isn't an issue, and since it is external I place the drive away from the computer and sight for safety.
VMWare Server is great, and I really appreciate the price (free). I'm currently using Virtual PC for my workstation virtualization (testing, different environments during development, etc), but since I'm so happy with VMWare Server, I'll be switching over to VMWare workstation on my next upgrade. If a client ever needs serious virtualization I'll recommend they give ESX server a try. I think VMWare giving away their basic server is a smart move for them.
The really nice thing about converting my physical servers to virtual ones is how portable they are now. I literally can suspend my 2 servers, disconnect my external SATA drive, move it to a beefy machine, connect it, and resume the 2 servers on the faster machine; that's slick.
Except that Vmware gave away Vmware Server a month before microsoft released their version for free.
So, first the obvious stuff you know. It may have no value to you, but for doing live demos and development environments its sweet.
vmware workstation - for $$ you get an amazing desktop virtualization environment perfect for people who write drivers and core operating system software. Snapshots and things, complete control over memory, "frozen in state" debugging from outside the vm.
vmware server - free. On the desktop, it lets you run more than one pc at a time. Also can run on a server -- even headless. It can start with the operating system and automatically load the vm's at boot time. A conside side app lets you manage your headless server platform remotely.
Then you get into their Data Center environment.
Don't think 1 machine. Thinking 10 machines. You deploy your vm's across them, using your EMC storage arrays. You don't even have to know which hardware is running your vm. They can be moved around at will. Add a machine to the pack and you increase overall power. A machine goes down? So what? Migrate the vm. The VM's all run with the same "drivers" which are virtual.
Have you ever kept a server longer than you wanted because you didn't want to deal with reinstalling an entire operating system and all the software just to take advantage of the new hardware?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Is VMWare shipping with VTx support yet, like Parallels.com? I've got WinXP, Linux and OpenBSD running under Parallels, and the performance seems far superior to VMWare.
GSX is being replaced by the VMware Server product.
You can create VMWare images using QEMU. It's a nice, free way to do so.
I just replaced 2 old servers, 1 running Windows 2000 server, and one running Linux. I had an IBM X31 Pentium M 1.3x ghz notebook laying around...
I must say, you must be doing something very different with your servers than I am with mine. The whole idea of replacing two servers with an old dusty laptop certainly gives the impression that your servers aren't exactly "serving" a whole lot. In fact, the primary reason, it seems, that you would use virtualization in the datacenter is because you're something like a shared hosting provider that needs to isloate accounts for security reasons.
Whenever I have process A running on a different machine than process B, it's because they're doing too much work for one computer to handle. What I'm really interested in is going the other way: adding more computers but making it behave as one. Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
Right now I plan to create an entire Windows XP virtual machine just for this - is there a way to create a machine which can run only Skype and reduce memory requirements by this? My hunch says "no" but I always have a feeling I'm missing something when it comes to tracking the VMware product lines.
I totally disagree about not assigning dual-cpus to ESX virtual machines. Changing from single-CPU to SMP is a pretty big deal. On Windows it means forcibly changing the HAL, on Linux it means changing to an SMP kernel. Additionally, having two-cpus makes for much smoother running VMs, since the guest operating system can run two-tasks in parallel. Yes, there is a performance hit for adding two CPUs. No, its not very big. Most certainly, if its an issue buy more hardware.
For example, doing something like running a DB Recouncilation with a single CPU box, will completely annilihate user interactivity unless you have two cpus. So his example of a reporter box that runs once a week not needing two CPUs... sure it doesn't need two CPUs.. unless you decide you want to do something else on the box while its running the report. Or let's say the report consists of two processes working in parallel.. they should run in parallel on a multiple CPU box and complete much, much faster. I've actually noticed in these types of scenarios it can be more than 2x improvement since you're getting more cache hits and much less context switching.
As it happens, I can't always get by in my job using only free non-commercial software. Now, I have to assume that several other people here are in the same boat, and commercial software can provide value to them. Given those circumstances, I'd prefer seeing a debate about the relative merits of particular software packages, and discuss it, rather than dismissing a product because it costs money. And if slashdot happens to make a side profit, more power to them.
Xen is ok, but it doesn't have the performance or the reliability of vmware.
Do you have anything to back this claim up?
I moved several virtual machines from VMWare GSX to Xen a few months ago, and noticed an immediate performance increase. I've had just as many reliability problems as I had with VMWare.. none.
from what i can gather recent versions of workstation (i've only used old versions so i dunno how true this is) have some desktop user (e.g. software devloper/tester) orientated features that server doesn't.
it seems vmware is trying to set up a free taster product and a better premium product in both client and server categories. In the desktop space player is the taster product and workstation is the premium product. In the server space server is the taster product and ESX is the premimum product.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
So here's 7 things I can say as to why I deploy all new systems as VM's:
1) Upgrading / retiring a server? Set up the new box, install VMWare, shut down VM on old server, copy files, bring VM up on new server - it never will know the difference (and this is without a SAN!) Got a SAN - VMotion the VM to a new server -0- (zero) downtime.
2) Custom app you only want to setup one and forget it! Great Plains, vendor platforms, your monitoring and cacti box. Set it up in a VM and let it live. You're never going to reinstall the box, so why put it on a box you may have to reinstall
3) Backups of a physical server suck. Think, with the box running, you can snap a fully functional complete disk image and move it offsite via nfs, cifs, ftp. If there is ever an issue, you roll back to that snap shot and it's just as if the server had a bad shutdown. No bare metal recovery that takes hours and hours. We're talking minutes (in a SAN enviroment).
4) Need a server to test something - create it! Setup anything you want in a VM - it doesn't care. Don't like it? Delete it! Need more power? Move it! Take it home with you for the weekend? Install player on your laptop and take the files with you!
5) Big hardware is better hardware. Running an enterprise on comsumer gear with a special sticker on the front is just bad. Enterprise grade servers are beaten into submission and have the best possible components. Dell has been known to hault production of a platform if a vendor's component fails during testing (the PE 4400's had this issue ~4 years ago). Using VMWare you can buy 2-3 big servers, rather than the 5-10 pc servers. Get 8-16gb of RAM per system. Get larger hard drives, and not waste so much space.
6) Isolate those apps. Sometimes its just better to let each application server have it's own OS instance. That way if you ever need to, you can replace them without having to worry that some interdependancy on the box will cause failures.
7) Its good to be green - think of the power savings when your entire enterprise is running on 1/10th the hardware. Using a performance SAN and a bunch of DL585's I can't think of a company under 10,000 people who can't run off of 1 racks worth of servers. Think about it - thousands of users, 100 server, in one rack. I have clients that are in the 50-100 user range running on 2 DL385's or PE2850's.
As one of the developers of both VMware Server 1.0 and Workstation 5.x, let me clear this up.
(Also, this blog entry might help with a few common misconceptions)
VMware Server, while similar in appearance and sharing much of the same functionality as Workstation, is a completely different product with a different use case and target audience. It is the successor to GSX, and is for people who want to set up, well, servers! The key feature that Server has that Workstation does not is remoting, where you run a server on a computer and connect to it from a separate computer via a remote console or web interface. The VMs can start up with the computer, shut down with it, and can be accessed by multiple users. The VMs also don't require an X installation to run the VMs, nor does it require any sort of UI to be running for the VM to run.
Workstation has a number of features that Server does not have. Among other differences, it supports multiple snapshots, teams of VMs (where multiple VMs can start up/shutdown together, can be in their own special network with custom NIC speeds and packet loss), and 3D acceleration in the guest (currently experimental, and requires DirectX in the guest for now). We have a lot in the works for the product, and the gap will widen.
The one difference that people seem to for some reason get upset over is the price. Workstation costs $189, while Server is free. People have asked me why they should get Workstation if Server is free. The answer is that you should get Workstation if it has the features you want. If Server is better suited to your requirements or budget, go ahead and get that. We're not trying to force you into buying Workstation, and we're in no way crippling the VMs. A VM made in Server should work in Workstation and Player just fine. Likewise, a VM made in Workstation should work in Server or Player.
Workstation is not somehow "better" than Server just because it costs more. It's a different product. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses. Yes, Server is free while Workstation is not, and part of this is because that's where mid-level server virtualization products were heading. Microsoft was considerably lowering the price on Virtual Server in an effort to hurt GSX sales. Xen, while not a huge contender in the enterprise yet, is free and good work is being done on it. Workstation, however, is unique enough in its dev/test features and still has value that we and our customers still feel is worth something. And you'll see that value continue to grow over time, just as you will with our other products.
I hope that helped you understand why we're still charging for Workstation while Server is free. Choose whichever product you like: Player, Server, Workstation, ACE, ESX.. They're all fine choices, and they all offer solutions to different problems. It's not just about virtualization itself anymore. It's about what you can build on top of it.
(Opinions expressed here are my own and are not necessarily representative of VMware, yada yada.)
"various services running" should have been "various servers running"
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
(Former VMWare employee, posting anonymously).
Settle down there, Gordon...
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Nice advertisement for VMWare, but Xen destroies VMWare in every benchmark I've yet seen. I understand they are taking different approaches, but with new CPUs supporting Intel's VT VMWare's OS advantage suddenly disappers. It should be a huge red flashing sign since VMWare's license doesn't allow benchmarks to be published. This page shows VMWare can compete in some places, but is pathetic in others. I don't know what makes them claim ESX server so much better than Xen, maybe they are trying to say VMWare is more stable? Because from my testing, Xen puts VMWare in the dust.
Xen's performance overhead is about 3-4% of the CPU. So sure things could be improved. But even if VMWare had no overhead (which it probably does) the performance difference is not something you'd really notice unless doing technical benchmarks.
In our hosting setup we have found that Xen is reliable, performs well, and the VPSs are about as functionaly identical as a 'real' dedicated server as you can get.
If your needs happen to be running Linux virtual machines and you're comfortable with the Xen tools then Xen is a great product. Glad to hear VMWare is also improving their products. Competition = good.
--
Xen-based Linux hosting and proud of it
Since our EULA didn't allow benchmarks to be published, most likely the only benchmarks you've seen are some that the Xen folks did for their SOSP paper, taken on a version of VMware Workstation from several years ago before the EULA was changed to forbid publishing benchmarks.
I understand that recently we changed the EULA back to allow benchmarking again. Let's see if the Xen folks redo their benchmarks or keep making hay by comparing with the old VMware Workstation 3.1 benchmarks...
[Standard disclaimer: I work for VMware, but I'm not speaking officially.]
Anyone know when/if their software will support OS X? I mean Parallels is all nice and everything, and BootCamp is great, but I really have been hoping to run Workstation on my MacBook Pro. That's the money shot that will help Apple out a lot. Live in Mac land day-to-day, and when you need to run that one app you can't get on Mac (in my case it's Visio) you've got it in a window. That's what I can't wait for.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
Not too long ago I ran the discovery and benchmarking on a big project to move the large internet credit card processor I work for to either Xen or VMWare ESX server. From the first benchmark to the last stress test, Xen outperformed and outgunned ESX at every turn. Here's the kicker! We had paid VMWare engineers helping us to configure and tweak the ESX boxes. As for help from Xen? Well, I had the user's manual and a subscription to their mailing list.
Management
Sure, the VMWare servers had nice pretty management tools that were probably a couple hundred yards ahead of Xen's CLI tools, but this company doesn't exactly tolerate idiots. The unix guys here are more than capbable of migrating to Xen, compiled from source with a customized kernel, with no problem. The command line configuration and live migration utilities are more than adequate considering we already have SSH access to the boxes in the back. There was no need to change the firewall configs to allow us VMWare console access or anything.
Performance
I ran series of benchmarks for the following applications: MySQL, Apache, Lighttpd, perl and php. All of the bechmarks were ran on the same hardware, I just re-imaged the two machines multiple times. Xen won in every race. As a matter of fact, on the dual core Opeteron SunFire the Xen vm was a whopping 600 seconds ahead of the VMWare vm at running MySQL's sql-bench suite.
Stability
Xen 3.0 is more stable, IMHO than VMWare. Though neither platform crashed or hosed, the ESX box had a lot of trouble keeping time via ntp and had some problems with disk I/O.
Distrust
I reported the time problem several times to the VMWare techs assigned to our case, and they assured me that it was a host os issue. Funny that this article mentions that ESX < 3 has a problem keeping time with a 2.6 kernel isn't it?
Future
Later this week I'll be recieving the first Intel VT enabled server we purchased. I'll soon see if any OS or any kernel (including GRSec patched) kernels can be booted under Xen. If that is case, my company is likely is to purchase XenSource's commercial products.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
Sure, you can probably plug the numbers into a suitably complicated equation, but it won't be linear and it won't be "obvious". The maxima won't be at the same place for different hypervisors, either. That's the point. If you use a single number benchmark, you can (almost) always find something product X does better than product Y. If you have the full behaviour of the system written out, vendors can't obscure things like that. It's good for the customer, as they can then see what product does the best with the specific characteristics they have in mind. It's also good for the vendor, because there's no pretense and no FUD (so the customers like you) and there's no denial (so the developers respect you).
Now, are ANY vendors going to do this? And I'm including Xen and VServers in this. Probably not. There are risks involved in being that transparent, plus costs. And even if the vendors all agreed it was a good idea, you think ANY of them would volunteer to go first?
This is not to diss VMWare. I respect them (as much as I respect any corporate entity) and this is just as true of the Open Source solutions. It's merely the practical reality that promoting a product through total education of the consumer is something neither party really wants. Customers want plausible denial if things don't work out, and vendors are not going to tell you to go to their competitors.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Virtualization meme has shown surprising strength in the past six months.
y =virtualization_meme_ver_3_0
VMWare looks like it's taking the lead over Microsoft.
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entr
Scott M. Herold: If you're using Linux and there is a dire need to use a 2.6 kernel in a VM [virtual machine], wait for ESX 3.0. VMware ESX Server has been plagued with time-keeping and performance issues that are reportedly resolved in the 3.0 version. I have personally configured and run 2.4 kernels inside of virtual machines that performed as expected for some large organizations only to see the same applications run degraded on a 2.6 kernel.
About time.
I have only one ESX server, it has only been down twice when I upgraded the host. but the system time in the guest OS is a bitch when the guest OS is Linux. Never did get it to work. not even with xntpd installed. Now it has only been test systems so I can live with having to run a ntpdate from a cron because it is 7 minutes slow every hour.
I had another strange issue, I have 2 w2k3 servers, 3 SuSE SLES 9, and some other stuff running.
But I once had a virtual disk failure on a SuSE server that looked just like a real disk failure(timeouts etc). strange when it is just a file on a raid disk. their site had no information that could help me with the errorcode, nor did their forums. It wasn't a big deal(test system) but for the "fun" of it I spent a day trying to figure out how to salvage a virtual server having a virtual disk crash. Didn't find any satisfying solutions, so I ended up installing a new server(copy virtual disk image) and being able to mount a copy of the "crashed" disk and I could then copy all the data over without errors.
Gave me a bit of hesitation for using it for real, I do not need virtual disk crashes to make my job interesting.
http://www.tektonic.net has better prices (and you get way more ram, disk, etc) for their VPS packages than rimuhosting.com, remember folks, competition = good.
notepad works great to customize some vmx files that were created in workstation. While you might not want to create a VM for player from scratch that way it helps a long way for different paths to iso and vhd files.
Since our EULA didn't allow benchmarks to be published
Did you ever consider adding an "if you publish mean things about our products, you have to buy the CEO's daughter a pony" clause to go along with that? Seems equally reasonable to me...
[Standard disclaimer: I never was VMWare customer, and now that I hear they think it appropriate to restrict what I may write about as part of their software license, I never will be. Maybe they should add a section forbidding users to reveal the terms of their EULA on slashdot]
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Herold: [In environments with] heterogeneous operating systems, VMware is the clear leader. Microsoft's recent addition of Linux support to Virtual Server shows they are moving in the right direction. While Xen has consistently mentioned that they have been able to get Windows booting, it has been eerily quiet lately on that front."
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/
A port of Windows XP was developed for an earlier version of Xen, but is not available for release due to licence restrictions.
If that is not a slander, i don't know what is. Perhaps Herold mispoke, I don't know. However going by the context and the purpose of the article, a cozy little place may be waiting for him in a marketing department.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
and 3D acceleration in the guest (currently experimental, and requires DirectX in the guest for now). We have a lot in the works for the product, and the gap will widen.
Do you mean a linux host with nvidia/ATI drivers running a 3D accelerated windows guest?
Considerably more expensive than Cedega, but man that would be cool.
Keep up the great work, ChipX86 !
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
This is the real ratio. With this ratio the best virtualizer is by far kqemu. So novell instead of funding Mono and other technologies that are after the microsoft red herrings, please do us a favor and give some money to Fabrice Bellard, to open up kqemu. (which he rightly deserves as he also happens to be the author of FFMPEG).
Why was this modded troll? Did none of the mods play HalfLife? ... geeze
You seem to be confusing commercial software with proprietary software. Those two are not the same thing; software can be free and commercial, and it can also be non-free and non-commercial at the same time.
Now, the problem here is not that VMWare is a commercial story, but that this story looks too much like an advertisement. If you think it's ok for Slashdot to make money directly on the content it chooses to post, oh well... I guess you're used to watching Fox News?
There's nothing wrong with selling andd paying money for Free Software. Red Hat make a living off of it.
Think about it - thousands of users, 100 server, in one rack. I have clients that are in the 50-100 user range running on 2 DL385's or PE2850's.
:-)
yah, but some people need to run J2EE apps
Too bad it doesn't work on AMD64x2 systems without disabling half the processor, that is unless you like crashing or NUMA errors (no no, not the crazy dancing kind). I love their workstation product, but I'll come back to drink the VMWare Kool-aid when they implement some method to bind a VM to one core (in software) or something without having to apply various hacks to my system to even use it.
... frustrated VMWare Customer
Now, the problem here is not that VMWare is a commercial story, but that this story looks too much like an advertisement. If you think it's ok for Slashdot to make money directly on the content it chooses to post, oh well... I guess you're used to watching Fox News?
I don't think I would be against it if the title of the story said "Advertisement: VMWare Rolls Out Their Largest Product Release". At least it would be out in the open, and I could forgive /. for trying to keep their heads above water.
At the same time, I agree with the GP post - open source is not and has never been the be-all end-all, and minus some phanatics on /., most people here agree that there are closed-source, proprietary, for-profit software packages that rock, and we should evaluate each software package on its merits, and not on its openness.
Take AppZapper for instance. Or TextMate. Both brilliant programs, that I have paid money for, that I believe has no OSS comparison.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
On all the things you could have claimed OSS can't compete on you pick a Text Editor. There are at least 5 or 6 capable Text Editors for Linux. I agree that there are some apps you can't get but I don't think this is one particular area OSS is lacking.
Works fine for me on an X2 3800+
Now, the problem here is not that VMWare is a commercial story, but that this story looks too much like an advertisement. If you think it's ok for Slashdot to make money directly on the content it chooses to post, oh well... I guess you're used to watching Fox News?
So, how do they announce technology news without it sounding like an advertisement? There's one line that says it's out (and points to another news site discussing the release) and another section that points to an open source news site that compares it to open source options and says it's better. It's not like they provide a direct link to purchase the product, or even to the vendor! I could see it as an advertisement if it was written as: "The new VMware software is out! Purchase it right now or we'll kill your puppies!"
Idiot
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http://www.workorspoon.com
I've been beta testing 3 since February, and our datacenter (of roughly 200 servers) is migrating to an almost-entirely ESX shop. I've beeen using it for a long while now, if anyone has any questions. IT's saved us TONS of money. Drew
Xen uses paravirtualization, where the kernel in the guest OS is modified. Xen takes about a 5%-10% performance hit over running an unmodifed OS on bare metal. VMWare traps privileged instructions. For many applications, it only takes a 10-20% performance hit, in others it is closer to 70%. Xen can only run unmodified OSs like Windows on very new CPUs that have virtualization support built in. Xen is hard to set up, no setting up a VM and sticking in your OS install CD, remember, even the installer kernel needs to be modified. Xen has no management interface, I've tried using the one that comes with YaST, and to put it bluntly, it isn't working at all yet. VMWare ESX comes with an integrated management system that shows logs and graphs for all virtual machines and lets you set up and migrate VMs easily. VMWare won't run 64 bit operating systems on anything less than the newest CPUs.
I work for New Mexico's Child, Youth, and Family Development IT department, and we are migrating our servers to an IBM BladeCenter running VMWare ESX, currently 2.5.1. I was asked to look into Xen, and my conclusion is, hey, you already bought the licenses for VMWare, and it's easier to use, go ahead and take the performance hit. It's a big one, probably averaging at least a quarter of your computing power down the tubes, but Xen, while great, is not (quite) ready for prime time, unless you need absolute maximum performance, don't need fancy schmancy management tools, and don't need to run Windows on a VM.
Where Xen could shine is on a brand new system with 64 bit processors with virtualization support (most dual cores have it) where you run primarily Linux and don't mind setting up your own management system. I'm thinking hosting companies or ISPs.
Where VMWare shines is for anyone who values ease of use over speed. I'm thinking most companies that have dozens of poorly managed workgroup, DNS, Intranet, print servers and what-not that they would like to consolidate into a single blade environment.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
On all the things you could have claimed OSS can't compete on you pick a Text Editor. There are at least 5 or 6 capable Text Editors for Linux. I agree that there are some apps you can't get but I don't think this is one particular area OSS is lacking. Sorry, perhaps I was thinking specifically to the OSX platform. Feature for feature, I don't think anything OSS stacks up to TextMate, BBEdit, etc. on the mac. But it's an IMHO kinda issue.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
hopefully now that VMWare has some competition, see http://www.parallels.com/, these products will continue to improve. There certainly is a need for these programs and I love to see the competition.
How does the licensing work on this? (assuming you have windows server or some other commercial product that charges per processor licensing). If you have a windows 2003 server running on VM-Ware (alongside say 2 other linux servers) and the VM-Ware is running on 10 different pieces of hardware (each with 1 cpu for simplicity's sake). Do you need a 10 Processor license of windows server? Does the VM-Ware have something manage licenses?
There's no blanket statement here. I'd imagine Microsoft would want it to be 1 license per VM. VM's can be configured to emulate single or multi-processor hardware, so I'd imagine the licenses would go with how that is set. If you have a vm, that is a license instance to most companies, and single or multi-processor rules apply.
Of course, you'd be doing this with linux anyway, right?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
"And if so why are they charging $189 for a workstation product when Server now does the same thing?"
Support. That is the key word in software today. More and more vendors are focusing less on getting license fees and more on generating revenue from support and related services.
There's nothing wrong with selling andd paying money for Free Software. Red Hat make a living off of it.
And luckily for them there's one born every minute.
You heathen, hast thou not heard of gvim?
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
I'll second this, but I'm not paying any $189. I'd pay $99 for a version of vmware workstation that supported only Direct3D passed through to linux OpenGL. Maybe he meant requires DirectX in the host OS, though. That would be sad, and fairly useless for the majority of us, unless it will pass OpenGL from Linux to Windows - that's still useless to most people; Cygwin provides a free X Windows server with OpenGL acceleration. Your linux applications can be run in a hidden virtual machine, displaying back to Cygwin/X.
I'd pay the full price if I could run Linux on the base hardware, and run Windows XP (and later vista) in the virtual machine, with both OpenGL and Direct3D graphics being translated to OpenGL on the host OS. I imagine that this is effectively impossible, but I suppose that's not necessarily true... But it's very, VERY difficult to get right, I'm quite sure of that :)
The simple fact is that I will use vmware server on windows on my upcoming laptop (HPQ NW9440 Mobile Workstation) with linux (probably ubuntu, it's easy and has a good set of packages) displayed back via Cygwin/X with OpenGL. Linux is the more stable host OS.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Let's not forget IBM's Virtual Machine hypervisor, which has been consistenly improved since 1967.. VM runs virtual Linux servers on z/series hardware and does it quite well. A lot of your favorite software has been ported to it already (Apache, Mono... ). If you're in an organization that has z/Series you owe it to your bosses to look at Linuz on Z - you can consolidate some servers on the same hardware your other business software is running on, with no power increase - and the licensing of the IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux) engines is such that adding IFLs doesn't add to licensing costs for other software running on the "conventional" CPs.
Open source: Source is available to some people, at least.
... (ref: wiktionary)
Closed source: Source is not available.
Free software: Software license doesn't restrict your freedom to use, change, distribute the software and your changes.
Proprietary software: The softwares license does restrict your freedom in some way.
Commercial: A money-making endeavor
MSWindows: an OS by Microsoft
GNU/Linux: an OS by the FSF + Linux Torvalds, at the least.
For example:
MySQL is a commercial database, which happens to be free, open source, and runs on Windows, GNU/Linux, and others.
Java is a commercial platform, proprietary, could be called open source, and runs on Windows, GNU/Linux, and others.
FoldingAtHome is probably non-commercial, proprietary, closed-source, and runs on Windows.
GCC is non commercial (if you don't count redhat developers patches), is free, open source and runs everywhere.
That is only to state the importance of not mixing theses concepts (open-source, commercial, "for Linux", free), because they define orthogonal concepts, and interchaging them leads to confusion, and does no good to a good discussion.
I can't think of a company under 10,000 people who can't run off of 1 racks worth of servers.
;-)
Hmm, Google has under 10,000 people. But I don't think 1 rack would cut it.
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
Actually, with Windows Server 2003, you are allowed to either run 4 virtual copies off of one license or one physical copy off that single license. I'm sure that makes auditing licenses very much more confusing, but its obvious MSFT is pushing virtualization. VMWare really is a sweet setup and with the free player and lots of free GuestOS for Ubuntu and Fedora you can't afford to not try it out. If anything you no longer have an excuse for not deploying test environments before rolling something into production.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
The cost of electricity 5 years down the line is probably going to play the biggest role in determining how much hardware you can run AND cool. Consolidating systems into VMs makes much more sense because a VM is not using its entire allocation of memory all the time, so it's easier to save on hardware and energy costs by having fewer systems - the VMWare mantra.
The only place I have seen that this is not true, is when you have a large compute farm, where each system is dedicated to running just that one job, which can take tons of memory (GBs) and always hits 100% CPU for thousands of jobs. In that case I would rather run without VMs because each machine is exactly the same as the next one and imaging a new system only takes a few minutes, localization and all.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Not an English Nazi, just appreciate inventive words :) :)