VMware Releases Server 1.0

epit writes "VMware has released v1.0 of their VMware Server product for free (as in beer) as planned. Up until now, it had been a beta download. You can download your copy via the VMware website. Release notes are also available."

Comments

Free download... sweet!

[ScottLindner]

I've never used VMware but have heard lots of great things from many people. I always wondered what the business model was for VMWare. Who uses it? Why would they pay for it? Things like that.

Are there any legit home uses for VMware on a regular basis?

Re:Free download... sweet!

[swb]

Testing OSes
Running multiple OSes on one machine
Isolated test environments
Running OSes on unsupported hardware
Running legacy apps (see above)

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Gr33nNight]

Our corporation has been using VMWare Server ESX for the past 2 years and it is great. Instead of having 5 servers in a rack, you can buy 1 beefy server and just have everything in a VM. But lets say your servers are mission critical and you are worried about a hardware failure on that 1 server. If you use VMotion you can have redundant servers, so if your main VMWare server box fails, the 2nd backup VMWare server automatically picks up where the other left off, you dont even notice that the virtual machine switched servers - it works that good. Seriously, VMWare is awesome.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[ScottLindner]

Another ignorant question....

Why would you need more than one server on a big beefy server instead of running everything on one server? Different OSs or environments?

I definitely understand the freedom it buys you. Would you use it at home, or is it mostly a server rack IT sorta thing and that's about it?

I've always felt running a couple of VM's on the desktop could be a useful way of dealing with malware. Searching for pr0n and warez in a virtual machine and whack it when I'm done. Farting around with installation of software in the another. And keeping a trusted basic VM for things I do everyday like email, finances, etc. I'm sure you could think of a better approach, but my thinking has been using virtual machines could be an effective solution to all of the malware troubles we have these days.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[hsmith]

As someone that develops, it is an amazing tool. Right now I want to test load balancing for my web application to ensure everything works correctly. I can setup a load balancing cluster, install it all, then throw requests at it all on my PC. It allows me to purchase no new hardware, no new software, and ensure that I am getting the results I desire.

While it doesn't allow me to stress test, it does allow me to test other aspects.

Plus i can install every OS/Browser combination I need and I only need to worry about diskspace. Plus, once you create the images, you never have to reinstall the OS, you just clone it. Awesome piece of software.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you use VMotion you can have redundant servers, so if your main VMWare server box fails, the 2nd backup VMWare server automatically picks up where the other left off, you dont even notice that the virtual machine switched servers - it works that good.

VMWare is cool, but VMotion doesn't do this. It allows live "migration" of running boxes, but not fault tolerance as you are suggesting. i.e. If one box fails, you are still screwed and all running sessions will be lost. However, if you can plan ahead and know you need to take the box down, you can move people while it is running and then take it down.

Fault tolerance would be really cool, but doubt this is possible. Essentially you'd need to have both boxes running the sessions simutaneously and perfectly synchronized at all times so if one fails the user's display/input can be redirected to the working box from the failing one.

I suppose with background snapshots, they could take a snapshot every 30 seconds or so and the other machine can pick up from that snapshot so you would lose at most 30 seconds of work. However, if the machine is connecting to outside machines like a transacting database this could be a big problem since the software might repeat database operations that shouldn't be repeated.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[mchawi]

If you have an application that is not memory or cpu intensive, but it doesn't work well with others - this works very well. Even if it does work well with others, it helps you to really put it by itself. This is partly useful for troubleshooting, but it means when you call a company for support they can't really point their fingers at anyone else because their product is the only thing installed.

It is also useful for things like clustered file servers. They don't take up much cpu/memory, but if you put two (or more) of them out there on a VM box you can roll them back and forth for patches, updates, adding drives, etc.

It also helps for disaster recovery. You can do the equivalent of a bare metal restore in a few minutes versus loading a machine from scratch, loading drivers, loading your backup software and then restoring.

So multiple answers - and I'm sure there are many more that I haven't listed.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[dwhittington]

As an IT security consultant, VMware server is be a great platform for testing or demoing applications wthout tainting my host OS with some code I'll just want to blow away laster. If you are involved in IT at all, I would recommend evaluating the technology.

Server virtualization is a hot market, Microsoft is ramping up their existing product line to compete with some of VMware's new features. Part of that roadmap is a good 2-3 years out. This is technology is far from a fad.

-David

PS: Legit home uses for VMware... my vote is a virtual honeynet.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[mchawi]

Very true. If you have anything that is cluster aware though this will work. This isn't really a function of VM of course, but what is cool about doing this on VM machines is you have multiple levels of redundancy. You can VMotion the inactive server, swap the cluster and then vmotion the active server - and doing it this way you can move machines from one piece of hardware to another with no downtime.

Again this isn't really a VM thing but if you have a whole VM farm on a SAN - you can swap out whole servers without impacting running processes. We mainly use this for file servers / DNS / AD / print servers , but if your servers are beefy I don't see why you couldn't do this with any cluster aware application.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Rude Turnip]

"Searching for pr0n and warez in a virtual machine and whack it when I'm done."

Thanks for sharing that.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[spazimodo]

I recently left a position where we were using ESX server to host mail (Lotus Notes under Linux) for around 10k users along with Notes application servers, and other Linux and Windows utility servers.

ESX was great because it allows for much more efficient use of Server hardware. In a lot of cases we had applications running on seperate servers because the apps were unstable. Without VMWare that means seperate hardware (usually racks filled with shelves and desktop PCs if the company is cheap, or 1U servers if they're not) and all the administrative overhead of dealing with those servers. We had 30-40 VMs running inside 12 physical servers including heavily used primary and failover mail servers.

Running inside a VM gives you advantages if you're running a lights out data center, or if your servers are at a remote location. Many has been the time where a server hung and I needed someone on-site to power cycle it - with VMWare you can power cycle the VMs from anywhere, and I've never seen ESX take a dive (supposedly there's a purple screen of death, but I've never seen it)

Another advantage is backup/disaster recover planning. With a VM, your whole server is just a couple files. You can copy those files to a remote location via a variety of means, and boom, you have an off-site clone of your server. More importantly the VMs are hardware independent - you can have a datacenter filled with Dell 6850s burn to the ground and when you power up your VMs in a colo facility running HPs, the VMs don't care about there being different RAID cards, or NICs with the wrong MAC addresses.

This post was made on a Dell D620 running ubuntu with VMWare workstation on top hosting a windows VM for when I need to do windows stuff :)

Re:Free download... sweet!

[VAXcat]

The popularity of VM solutions is a damning indictment of the OS environment, scheduling and multi user memory protection capabilitie of Windows. If it was really a serious OS (say, like VMS) it would be possible to routinely host dozens of different applications and thousands of users on a single box, instead of the "1 app/1 server" mentality that permeates the Windows world...

Re:Free download... sweet!

[ChronoReverse]

If you're running the ESX-class virtual machines, there's a number of things you can do besides isolation.


For example, Vmotion allows you to move a virtual machine from one physical machine to another while it's still running without interruption. The newest versions will even automagically load balance virtual machines.


It's all really amazing technology that makes you think that it should've been done this way in the first place.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Johnny O]

You have to run 1 app/per server in the windows world. Even our windows programmers keep telling me that every windows box is stable as hell. It's until you load the apps that it becomes unstable. And it could be true. I wouldnt know. But we have some SHARP windows programmers!

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Dr Caleb]

Another advantage to virtulaization is power requirements. Instead of 3 racks of old servers generating 5000BTU each, running NT4, we set up 1 4U blade server to virtualize them. We have to run NT4 because the servers run custom software that depends on NT4. (And there are NO plans to upgrade or change that legacy system.) Now we use 45000 BTU less power and an equally less amount of air conditioning.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[spun]

We use it here in the Child, Youth, and Family Development department in New Mexico. We have an IBM BladeCenter where the blades run VMware ESX with Virtual Center, and most VMs run SuSE Linux. We are transitioning from HPUX and AIX to an all Linux backend. We like that combo because it makes it easy to clone and move machines as need be. When a server becomes overloaded, we can buy another blade and move some VMs over onto it with ease.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[nuzak]

> The popularity of VM solutions is a damning indictment of the OS environment, scheduling and multi user memory protection capabilitie of Windows.

Just have to get your digs in on Windows, don't you? So what about those people that like to virtualize Linux? Does Linux automatically suck too?

Or just maybe there's reasons that go beyond stability.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[macdaddy]

Entreprises were the original users of it. More functional servers in less physical space is quite appealing to large entreprise customers. Think about how many wasted CPU cycles are in a small datacenter of 20 machines. Those 20 machines collectively have 40GB of RAM and 30-40 total processors and yet are actually utilizing maybe 10% of the actual resources. Harness that power and use the unused cycles for other servers. These companies quickly realie the benefits of stripping out the wasted layer of overhead from underneath the server (also called Windows) and instead buy a copy of ESX. These are also the companies that require products with support.

I think this will quickly take off in the small to medium size companies as well. The tech is really esay to set up. The basic server is now free. Why should a small office buy a new machine just to test a new development product when they can easily, securely, and safely set up a virtual on a slice of a another under-utilized server? At some point they'll realize they need support and they'll buy a support contract with VMWare. At some point they may even step up to ESX. It's a win win situation for everyone.

I have a vision for the next step VMWare might take. I think they'll come up with a way to leech the unused CPU cycles and othe resources off of existing servers without actually putting a VM on that existing server. It sounds weird but let me explain what I mean. To me VMWare works best when you have a machine dedicated to running VMs. I run GSX at home. Nothing else runs on the host itself most of the time. The problem is most companies that want to get into virtual environments probably can't afford to buy a new dual CPU server just to experiment with a technology that they don't necessarily trust. They're going to want to run it on a server they already have. This server will undoubtedly be in production already. They'll install VMWare Server on this box and will greatly limit the amount of resource the virtual can consume. This of course will likely lead to a bad experience with virutalization technology. If something bad doesn't happen then they'll at least be disappointed with the performance. To counter this I'd like to see a piece of software that can be installed on half a dozen production boxes that gives a management box an interface to the CPUs on those production server. This would let you spread around the CPU load of your virtuals much like a beowulf cluster. This would be make migrating to VMWare much easier for most companies in my opinion. They could add numerous servers and a couple high-end workstations to the cluster of machines and slowly but surely remove servers from the cluster and turn it into a new dedicated VMWare server.

The other use of this software is probably the more likely use of it. Most migrating companies aren't going to be able to afford or justify $15-25k on a new billy badass server to host their VMs on. Instead they'll end up with a dozen lower-end existing servers. They'll run a few VMs on this server, a few on that server, etc. If they could simply bond them all together into one cohesive unit they could manage them easier and give the lower-end customers a much more useable product. You might have to dedicate a machine to be the brains of the operation but that wouldn't be that costly. It's a lot more cost-effective to use the dozen or so Dell 1850 and 2850 servers you already own instead of buying a new 6850. This could also be a way to introduce fault-tolerance into your virtual environment. As long as the brain server is running the CPU requests can be sent to any of the available servers and can work around those that are fully loaded or KIA.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Bert64]

I totally agree...
I run a number of unix systems in the same way, i currently run 2 mailservers (1 for sending/receiving mail, 1 for spam filtering) spam filters, http/https, dns, database, ircserver, asterisk and jabber server on a single quad processor box with redundant power, raid5 disks, daily tape backup and ecc memory.
The OS does a good job of keeping everything apart from each other, and implements ulimits to prevent one service going nuts and consuming all the ram/cpu.
If i had to split all these services to seperate machines i'd be running on massively inferior hardware, with far less redundancy features... And i'd lose the burst ability - admittedly seperate boxes would be faster *IF* every service was heavily loaded, but it's usually the case that only one or two services see heavy load at any one time, during which time these services have access to a single far more powerfull system than if they ran on a smaller dedicated box.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Bert64]

As someone said earlier, the "1 server per task" mentality is a result of flawed OS's and apps...
Similarly, the "physical reboot / physical console access" idea is a result of flawed hardware/firmware design (well, more a result of people using systems designed for desktop use as servers). and flawed gui-only os's (again, designed for desktop use)
Any proper server system will have at the very least a serial console, with the ability to reboot/manage/reinstall etc from it... I have a vax from the late 80s with such a feature, and i've never seen a sun sparc system without serial console support.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Azarael]

Would that work for using multiple development environments as well? My manager wants us to adopt a Windows only Eclipse IDE and the rest of our shop runs Mandrake. Currently we're stuck moving to different machines or accessing the IDE on our windows server through remote desktop(slow).

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Kadin2048]

Windows computers can be very stable. The trick?

Turn them on their sides.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Kadin2048]

While I agree with your sentiments surrounding the use of desktop/workstation OSes and hardware as servers, particularly ones that are being used for mission-critical applications, the fact that a machine can be rebooted from a serial console doesn't necessarily make it as easy to manage as a virtual machine.

Unless you have another machine which is serving the serial consoles up onto the net and which you can connect to remotely, you're not going to be able to access those consoles from outside the datacenter. So rebooting your server still requires a call to your operations people (and if it's a colo, probably a fee), just for them to switch to that machine's serial console and reboot it.

A virtual machine, on the other hand, can be rebooted and managed from anyone, provided you can SSH into the host OS. (And provided the host OS is stable and doesn't need to be rebooted.) Rebooting a virtual server is as easy as issuing a command to the virtualization software. This means you can go ahead and run software that you'd never want to run on your non-virtualized production system -- if it crashes, only that service goes down.

Anyway, while I agree that no 'real' server should be without serial console support, there are still reasons why a big server running a bunch of VMs can be easier to manage than a rack of even well-designed 1Us.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux doesn't suffer the 1-app/1-server mentality problem that Windows does. And, even without using virtualization software like Xen, QEMU, VMware, etc, it was still possible to create "virtual" environments with chroot. A Linux box could use a single NIC card and host multiple applications and services, each in a private chrooted environment, all using a dedicated IP address (assuming the software could be properly configured to bind only to a single interface and port).

Virtualization software takes that to the next level.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[jbplou]

Well this really depends what you are running. If it is a web server without session states stored in memory I seriously doubt end users would know you had a server failure. Now if it is something with connected session states like Oracle connections(I know busy db servers run poorly virtualized just an example) most likely all connections are gone and users need to reconnect.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[statusbar]

The problem comes with multiple apps that have different dependencies. For instance take installations of php4, php5, apache1, apache2, phpBB, mediawiki, coppermine, subversion and trac, all using mysql and postgresql. Each one has plugins. Each one has potential security vulnerabilities.

I've been in the situation where one of the above required updating to fix a security hole, effectively breaking the rest. For instance, one needed to be using mysql5 but the others didn't support it.

Now they can all live on their own separate Vmware machines and can be updated separately.

--jeffk++

Re:Free download... sweet!

[timeOday]

I use it for exactly that... I develop under linux, and have XP and Office under VMWare. For that matter, I've developed under cygwin on a Windows guest on a Linux host.

I have also used VMWare for some applications designed to "own" the computer they run on... these apps require certain OS versions, certain user accounts, filesystem structure, etc. etc.

We have also used VMWare to run Windows software on a Linux cluster. I wasn't closely involved, but as I understand it, numerical codes (which are mainly CPU bound and don't make many syscalls) pay little performance penalty for running under VMWare.

In fact, I'm only about 75% happy with VMWare going "free as in beer," since the pricing wasn't really burdensome and now I'm worried about VMWare's future. It would be great if an OSS alternative truly existed, but for the level of functinality and finish of VMWare, I don't think anything else is close.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[quanticle]

My manager wants us to adopt a Windows only Eclipse IDE

Eclipse is multi-platform, with versions available for Windows, Linux and OS X.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Vmotion V3 is supposed to do exactly as the parent described. 2.5 versions would not have this capability.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[timeOday]

You didn't address the point, though, which is "why do we need virtualization when the OS is already supposed to let applications share hardware?" It's a valid question.

In my case, I use VMWare because I work in a mixed OS environment, and I want to have all my work on a single laptop. It's certainly useful, but of course the hardware requirements are higher, and the performance somewhat lower, than if all my applications were cross-platform. But since that isn't the real world...

Re:Free download... sweet!

[really?]

Also, using only one OS prevents you from using "best of breed" software; yes, believe it or not, there are certain VERY GOOD applications that don't run on Linux. How about legacy stuff that is just not replaceable, yet dedicating a whole box to them would just be too much. Virtualization DOES have its place. IMHO, and all that.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Coolest thing that I personally like about the VMServer is the ability to be able to boot up a SuSE 10.1 based Xen Dom0. I have yet to create DomUs though, nonetheless, it sure beats having to dedicate two boxes to play around with Xen. I'm running VMWare Server 1.0 in SuSE 10.1, which then is running a SuSE 10.1 VM booted up as a Dom0! Now how geeky-cool is that? :D

Re:Free download... sweet!

[someone300]

You know, if you're running some fully Xen compatible OS like Linux then it's likely that Xen would be the better option in terms of speed and system resources. It supports VMotion like things too I believe.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[someone300]

With a bit of planning you can do side by side installs of all those without chroots or even different prefixes I believe (easier on some distros of Linux than on others). Through chroots/jails/prefixes/virtualisation this can be made simpler but there are drawbacks to every method.

The mysql migrations were a pain in the ass but I managed to get mysql3 and mysql5 side by side during the period of migration.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Peter La Casse]

On the flip side, what kinds of programs does it screw up? Can you load an out-of-tree non-vm-aware kernel module that talks to non-vm-aware hardware into a kernel inside the vm? How does the vm affect the timing of interrupt routines that run within the vm?

Re:Free download... sweet!

[v01d]

He could be talking about Rational Application Developer, which is the most god-awful piece of shit IDE ever known to man. It's essentially Windows only though.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Achromatic1978]

Linux doesn't suffer the 1-app/1-server mentality problem that Windows does.

Hang on hang on - a moment ago it was the OS being indicted for "1 app/1 server", but now it's a mentality (and yes, it is) - how is the mentality the OS's fault?

Re:Free download... sweet!

[spazimodo]

Hey, we'd all love to apps and OS's written correctly, but to paraphrase Rumsfeld, "you go to work with the environment you have, not the environment you want." Good luck running Blackberry Enterprise Server under OpenVMS.

Also, most people would love to have Vaxen or big-ass iSeries or pSeries boxes, but VMWare lets you do similar things with x86, at a fraction of the cost. Unfortunately for big iron types, the pool of tasks that have to be put on that sort of hardware is rapidly getting smaller and smaller. We had the option of going with any architecture we wanted with the environment described in my original post, the one we chose cost less to build out than the yearly maintinance on the SP2s they replaced. (Support was easier too since we could avoid all the drinking on the job required when dealing with people who still refer to disk space as DASD)

Re:Free download... sweet!

[PCM2]

Hey, if you read this, track down my e-mail address at the bottom of my homepage and drop me a note. I'd like to talk to you more about ESX etc.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Azarael]

Actually, we do use eclipse, unfortunately not all plugins are cross platform. Right now we're evaluating Sonic Workbench http://www.sonicsoftware.com/products/sonic_workbe nch/index.ssp/ to do a bunch of XML transformation stuff(yay, sarcasm). Besides this particular plugin/perspective, I've come across a few others on the eclipse site that have the same issue.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[fbg111]

It also helps optimize server resource utilization. Many datacenters have, say 50 blade servers, each with an application that uses on average 50% of that server's cpu time and memory, in which case the business is only getting 50% of its money's worth out of the hardware. Virtualizing your servers in such a situation makes it possible to move applications to underutilized servers without taking them offline and reinstalling them, allowing datacenters to better optimize hardware resource useage on the fly. For large datacenters, virtualiztion is the latest killer app.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[rikkards]

Where I work servers get replaced every couple of years when the warranty runs out. There are apps and databases owned by specific groups that have existed since the 400Mhz was the bleeding edge in server processor speed. Because of politics and the replacement process, the current servers are running at minimal processor capacity when these applications could be sitting on a virtual server rather than using real hardware.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[wasabii]

Heh. I think this is funny.

At work, we use vmware-server, running on Linux hosts, to run the Windows guests. We don't ever actually have any Linux guests. All of the services we use on Linux are perfectly capable of being installed parallel to other Linux apps... even installed or run multiple times on the same box. Nothing prevents you from launching two copies of Apache, two copies of some Java server, etc. Your limit is really RAM and CPU.

On Windows however it's a different situtation. You can only have one copy of IIS per each OS. One copy of IE. One copy of most server software, as it registers itself in places in the registry that can't really be duplicated. One copy of most software on user instances because it purposely detects itself running twice and just brings the current instance to the front.

It's just an aspect of the platform.

Even our test servers are just two copies of Apache running seperatly on the same boxes. Or somebody running a per-user Apache to test his own code. Or somebody running a complete instance of postgresql, twice.

The ideas enshrined in Unix have made most of this possible. Basically just having the ability to chroot alone does most of the work... but most of the time you dont' even need that. Most Unix programs can take a prefix you specify. Or aren't hard coded to read from absolute paths... or don't store in "absolute" storage bases, such as the registry.

Well, anyways, it just speaks to our environment. We have a very mixed environment. We have lots of WIndows servers, active directory, MS SQL, IIS... and we also have Linux boxes. And the Windows ones we have found a business requirement to VM, the Linux ones, we haven't.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Hyperx_Man]

1 app per server is not only done because the OS can't handle it. It is done when hardware fails on a server and then you are hosed - because instead of one app being down, you have 8 of them. Virtualization allows you to load up VM sessions on another server - as long as you use some NAS (or SAN). I ran 20 Linux Servers and each one had one app. It's all about the actual server failing/being stolen (happened once) or being taken by the feds for investigative purposes (sexual harrasment suit lawyers managed to take our exchange server for a week). Now everything is in VM sessions - on multiple SANs.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[suckmysav]

"Why would you need more than one server on a big beefy server instead of running everything on one server?"

Good grief, where do I start?

Putting everything on one big server is a recipe for disaster. What if one app goes down and you need to take it down, reboot, rebuild, whatever? You have to take your whole bloody network down. Lots of angry users.

What if you upgrade your apache server which inadvertantly causes your mysql server to die? What do you do. Restore the whole shooting match from backups? Spend an hour or two trying to roll everything back? All while your users are looking over your shoulder asking "how long before it's fixed?"

Doing it that way is just shitfight city.

On the other hand, if you run all your servers virtually you open up a whole world of possibilities.

For example, a few years back I worked at a place that ran their whole operation on a bunch of NT4 servers made up of a pair of Compaq Proliant ML530's (which supported SMP but only had single 1Ghz P3s fitted). These servers also had 1Gb RAM each plus 3 x 18Gb SCSI in raid 5 configuration. On top of that they had a hodge podge of whitebox servers, all with SMP mobos but only single CPUs. It was a nightmare.

One day the backup tape drive died and the bosses were not keen to spend 3 grand for a new one. Also, I already had the shits with the whole shitfight so I built a few tempory boxes, moved the stuff onto them and pulled the 2 compaqs offline. I cannibalised one of them and made a monster (well it was back then) server with dual P3's, 2Gb RAM, 6 disk hardware raid and redundant PSU's. I kept the remaining chassis as a spare in case the main box died.

I stuck redhat 9 on the "monster" and GSX server on that. Then I built 8 virtual servers, 2 x Win2K AS and 6 x redhat 9 and ran all of the main apps (apache, sendmail, PDC, BDC, FIle+print, MySQl and a CRM package all on seperate virtual servers. Once this was done I switched off all the other boxes and after running like that for a few weeks to make sure all was OK I also scrapped those boxes. Again I cannibalised them and came up with a lesser monster whitebox which I also put vmware GSX on, stuck 1gbit lan cards in both and hooked the two up with a link cable, wrote some scripts to backup the servers across that link nightly.

So, I had rationalised the entire server room down to two boxes, considerably improved reliability and all for the price of a vmware license and on top of that I had a spare chassis available in case of a catastrophic failure.

About a year later one of the SCSI discs died. The whole thing kept working but it was sloooow. So, all I did was manually copy over the server images from the nightly backup, shutdown the main server and turn on the primary lan interface of the backup box. The whole shebang was back up and running within an hour with no loss of data. Neato.

Other advantages for vmware are;

If you want to do major upgrade to a server, you can just copy the server image to your development box, fire it up, do the upgrade and then test it all out. All perfectly safely. If you fuck it up then you just do it again and try to figure out what went wrong, document your steps and when it is time to do the live upgrade you simply do a manual backup and then do the upgrade. It should work OK because you have already tested and documented your process and even if it doesn't it is a simple job to just restart the old server from the backup you made and start again.

If you want to do something like a major overhaul of something like a webserver with a mysql backend then you will love vmware. You just leave your old server running and build up the new one over how many days/weeks/months you like. You can fully test it in a sandbox network (another great feature of vmware, "host only" networks) and once you are satisfied that all is well you just copy it over to the main box, shutdown the old virtual server, start up the new one and you're done. If there is a problem down the track you ju

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the '1 app 1 server' is not the capability of the OS but the support offered by the vendor. When you are working with enterprise level applications on any OS - Linux, Windows, AIX, etc - many vendors will point fingers at other applications as being the 'root cause'. So if the cost of the OS is not an issue (enterprise licensing / open source / etc) - why wouldn't you?

If it makes troubleshooting easier, the ability to take things down and update them, clustering applications, moving applications / servers to different hardware, management, reporting, being able to move a CPU from one box to another, adding/removing drives on the fly, NIC teaming, centralized SAN backup, faster disaster recovery - why wouldn't you look at it? We probably save more in our DR costs alone than we spend for ESX licenses.

One of the things I do like with our virtualized Linux boxes is that I don't worry at all about drivers. As long as VMWare can access the hardware - so can the Linux box (usually only use SuSE and Redhat). I update one driver - and all 60+ of my virtual machines now use the abilities of that updated driver. Another benefit.

I also see the '1 app 1 server' much more for *nix than I do for Windows. Firewalls, routers, switches, IDS/IPS, databases, proxy servers, SSLVPN, web servers - the list can go on forever. Not saying that Windows even offers these capabilities in some cases, just that the 1 app / 1 server = more stability didn't start with the Windows camp.

There are also very valid reasons where you don't want other things on your box. Think about things like CA servers for your PKI infrastructure. If you want to run everything else on that box and consider it 'secure' - welcome to audit hell.

I've also never worked in an enterprise environment where your public web servers had anything on them except your public website. We usually don't put our dev site out on a box that the public can get to even if it has a separate IP.

If Linux couldn't benefit from virtualization just as much as all the other operating systems, I don't see why IBM, Dell, Xen, Microsoft, Softricity and Citrix all work on differing types of virtualization technologies.

The final endpoint will be a separation of the OS and the hardware. If you think this is about trying to get around 'shortcomings' in any particular OS, you are missing the big picture about where virtualization technology is going in the next few years.

Microsoft won't have to worry about backwards compatability. Their next OS can have no backwards compatability as long as it runs a virtual machine that can run their old software.

Linux can worry less about drivers as long as they can talk to any type of hypervisor for the hardware.

SCO can....oh...well....they probably won't be around then. Nevermind ;)

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Decker-Mage]

Since so much of my work of the last few years has revolved around systems (physical/network/computer) security, I spend quite a bit of time doing walkabout in the underground community. Running on a virtualized machine is ideal for this purpose since, as you said, you just whack the current session when you are done and boot from the safe snapshot. However this isn't typical home use. What is typical home use is to have the kiddies on the computer and, again, having them run under a VM is just as ideal unless they are playing demanding (D3D) games. If something goes on the fritz, whack the current session and load the prior snapshot(s) until things work right. I've lost track of how many calls I get asking me to come out and fix machines that the kids, and far too often some adult, has mangled by going to the wrong place or installing the wrong thing. Not only do they want me to unmunge/restore the machine, they want me to prevent a recurrance. This solution does tend to mitigate the problem quite a bit once you explain it correctly. I wouldn't be surprised to see it incorporated in some future version of whatever M$ and every one else comes up with next. Sort of like what another article ("A Closed-Off System?") posted in today's mail message was asking. Have a hardware-level write-protected host and who cares what you do to the various guests. Hell, each user could have their own custom-tailored guest with (most) every OS out there to suit their desire/needs.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Decker-Mage]

Here, Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise

• are

considered fairly serious operating systems, especially the latter. VMWare is not used here to apply your one app/one server rule at all. Instead it is about two overarching factors: (1) Redundancy. Should the host machine fail, it is a simple matter of loading the various VM's onto another host. I even have a collection of master virtual hard drive images on DVD-ROM here to restore from so it isn't any big deal if a major disaster strikes. I'm out the door with the master DVD's and my data backups [and there is another set far, far away with hardware already standing by]. Practically any relatively new collection of whiteboxes will do to get me back up and running and that was a major selling point to others especially after Katrina. I also don't buy into the stability problem that the arrogant elite assert. Stability is seldom a problem here and the two times that it became a problem, hardware was the failing component. The only reason to reboot I have these days, short of outright hardware failure, is for the idiotic WindowsUpdates. Even those are scheduled by me, not Microsoft. Every patch gets tested both here and in the court of geek opinion before the patch goes in and that testing is done, you guessed it, on various VM's with suitable configurations. Having been burnt once by Microsoft on a patch was once too many times, thankfully I never allow production machines to automagically install or even download them. Given the other defenses here, frankly I'm not that worried about the 0-day of the month anymore, which gets me to my second point.

However, that's just all icing on my cake here. The cake that is hiding under all that icing is solid granite. This is what I call my bastion defense as I've mentioned in passing in one of these VMWare articles before. The major defense is that the machines that make up the network of "machines" and "clusters" is heterogeneous. It isn't just a mix of Windows machines, it is a mix of Windows, various flavors of Linux (RHEL 9, Novell/SuSe Enterprise 9, FreeBSD, Ubuntu desktops), and a few other oddballs (a guy needs some secrets) out there any one, or several, of which can be real or virtual. Just as there are real and virtual "networks." Just as there are external firewalls, numerous internal firewalls, and the whole setup is wired-up like a pinball machine for monitoring, IDS, and IPS. And, of course, there are a few honey-pots out there to keep the whole thing attractive once I do get a live one wandering about "in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." That heterogeneity allows me to play to the various strengths and weaknesses of each of the elements that make up this moat-surrounded, layers upon layers of walls, mazes, and more than a few (tar) pits, "murder holes", spys, attentive guards, and should you win through that all you have to cope with the dragon. Me. {Picking teeth with a long-sword.}

If the unthinkable should happen and one of the production servers gets cracked (hacked), well it's still no big deal. All the serious players here, *nix to Windows, save the databases which use a different design architecture, are all hosted virtual machines whose state is regularly snapshotted. I may lose a few hours of DNS, DC, or whatever changes/updates, but yon cracker is going to find that network that he just mapped no longer follows the same map. That is yet another of the contingency plans here as well as identifying the failure point(s). Jigger everything around and totally screw them up.

Am I paranoid enough? I don't think so. Then again, I haven't had a single machine taken out by a virus, worm, cracker (hacker), or malware since 1989 despite some of the crazy places I go to and the crazy things I do. And that was on mi Amiga when I was the person responsible for ensuring that all the CompuServe uploads were safe (and worth downloading back when usage fees really meant something!). I consider VM technology to be my S

Re:Free download... sweet!

[agm]

I am a developer for an ERP solution and we recommend people do not run any other hefty applications (i.e. mail servers, web servers) etc, when they host the server for our application on Windows. Why? Because when they start complaining about performance that's where we point the finger first. If we don't know what other processes are doing on the server, then diagnosing performance issues is more difficult. Anyway - when the software costs 5 or 6 figures, and the hardware only 4, it's not a big deal from a financial perspective.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Spliffster]

At work I am using vmware for develoment servers for years now (started with vmware 1 or 2). this saves a great bunch of hardware since I use many different setups but usually use only 2-3 servers concurrently. On a P2.4ghz with 1.5GB Ram this is really performant and convenient. Windows Desktop software is tested in vmware before rollout. we use a vm with a std windows setup and create a snapshot before installing s/w. if it fails we just roll back that snapshot (it's eighter one click or copying a couple of files [namely the disk images] back into place).

A couple of our customers require Windows web hostings. these are all low bandwidht/low load hostings. these are run in a VMWare vm too. if a server gets compromised or start bitching after an update (ever tried to get rid of a DAC upgrade after it made all your database dependant applications go nuts?) we can just rollback to the snapshot before the update (the user data and logs are stored on a seperate partiotion which is not affected by that rollback).

At home i use vmware on my linux laptop to run some games (3D acceleration heavy games will not run in VMWare and SafeDisc will give you a hard time, but there are "patches" :) and windows apps which refuse to work with wine.

I also read often that people who write windows software use VMware to test their installers/applications on windwos ... because rolling back to a snapshot is so easy and you can always start testing from exactly the same point (ever tried to clean the registry propperly after an installation ?).

All in all, i am extremely satisfied with the ease of use, cost effectiveness and power consumption of vmware on linux and windows. it's really the best thing since sliced bread.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[NightWhistler]

I was actually considering something like this: with LVM or RAID you can cluster several physical harddrive partitions into one big "resource-pool" on top of which you can then create virtual partitions again.

Now, wouldn't it be great to apply this principle to servers? We'd bundle a group of physical machines into one big super-computer which could then run an arbitrary number of virtual servers. To stay in the old Slashdot tradition: "imagine a Beowolf cluster of..." :-)

Feel free to verbally smack me if this already exists, just musing here...

Re:Free download... sweet!

[creepynut]

Wow, that worked! Than~`*#%*&SS9 NO CARRIER

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Tony Hoyle]

Why would you need more than one server on a big beefy server instead of running everything on one server? Different OSs or environments?

If you're selling app hosting to companies you don't want to be spending all that money on hardware.

I worked at a place were they actually used VMWare Workstation (and later GSX I think) for this - as many VMs as they could stuff onto each (fairly beefy) dell server - then you could sell the customers an app 'running on an xxxx dell server with 3GB or RAM' and not be lying at all... the fact that they were sharing that with half a dozen others is a detail.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[pnutjam]

My kiddie games don't work in VMware windows XP, it's just flash...

Re:Free download... sweet!

[pnutjam]

Sounds like mental health? I'd be interested in hearing more about your set-up and sharing some of ours, please email me.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Amouth]

Slackware in Virtual Server responds very well and also in Vm ware.. infact i love it.. (mainly for the undo disks).. nothing like saying crap i screwed that up and just jump back to before the last boot... i just wish you could have multiple stages of undo disks.... without having to have huge copies of the disk images everywhere

Re:Free download... sweet!

[afidel]

The majority of VMWare's paying clients were already using ESX server for vmotion and the management tools or Workstation for the advanced features it offers. Putting server out there for free just encourages more people to play with the software and become hooked. Then once they realize how great virtualization is they will want to purchase VMWare's tools to manage it all. With upcoming Vanderpool and related hardware vitualization technologies VMWare realized that their future was is being a value add, not in the virtualization tech itself.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[jschrod]

Too bad that i don't have mod points. Folks, mod the anon parent up!

The only thing that he forgot to mention is the advantage of snapshots.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[VAXcat]

There's this thing called clustering....Microsoft sells something they call that, but it's not even a pale shadow of VMS clustering...VMS clusters have uptimes measured in decades, and take care of the fear of having all your eggs in one basket. VMS clusters can have hundreds of nodes of all sizes from desktop to mainframe class, over a variety of media, and can be spread geographically caross hundreds of kilometers. Choosing to have your egss in m one basket (or in a super powered, unstoppable multi node basket in the case of a VMS cluster) is one thing...having to do it because your OS isn't up to the task of doing two things at once is quiet another...

Re:Free download... sweet!

[VAXcat]

Another sad commentary on the level of expertise and sophistiocation available in the microsoft world, all the way from the vendor down to the customer level, with incompetent cunsultants in the middle, encouraging the low level of ability all the way...

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Zerbey]

I have a full Active Directory environment, including SQL and Exchange clusters all running on my lab machine here. 5 virtual machines in total. Runs amazingly well considering. I love this product!

Re:Free download... sweet!

[tehcyder]

I think some of that post probably made sense, but I'm not sure.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Azuma Hazuki]

I've been using this for several months to run my copy of XP in. Basically there are 2 reasons I still use Windows: Anvil Studio (MIDI sequencer), and Super Jukebox (SNES music player). Which brings me to the issue of sound. VMWare Server emulates what seems to be a low-end SoundBlaster, perhaps an Ensoniq 1370.

The point? You *will* get skips and weirdness if you play MIDIs through the MSGS synth (standard synth on Windows), and even wave or mp3 audio can hiccup. VMWare isn't meant to be a multimedia solution, I know, but would it be so hard to emulate something a little more powerful for sound? A slightly better graphics card wouldn't hurt either, though it knocks the socks off Qemu's. I wonder if they'll eventually let you use the graphics and sound HW directly as they do with the CPU?

Hm...vericode was "extends." Interesting.

Re:Free download... sweet!

[Bert64]

Well, your VM server is a far more complex beast than a simple serial console server, and is therefore far more likely to go down...
Anyone running a significant number of servers with serial consoles should have a console server anyway.

But the point is, you have a single point of failure in either scenario, just with serial consoles that point is less complex and less likely to fail.

On the other hand, you can take advantage of the fact that most systems have 2 serial ports, and pair all your systems up with the console connecting out of one and into another, so a machine only becomes inaccessible if it's pair goes down too.

Virtual PC

[xilet]

I wonder if there is any concidence between this and Virtual PC 04/07 being released free. Hrmm...

Re:Virtual PC

[xilet]

If you are not aware of it (I wasn't until earlier today) Microsoft is now putting Virtual PC 04 and 07 [still in beta] out for free. Virtual PC Website

Re:Virtual PC

[killjoe]

Probably not because virtual PC is so inferior to VMware. They are not even in the same league really.

Re:Virtual PC

[Martin Blank]

There is some correlation in an overall strategy, and there may be something more than coincidence to the timing of the releases. Microsoft is eager to make its presence known, especially in selling Virtual Server. Virtualization addiction on the desktop leads to virtualization addiction on the server (not that this is a bad thing). Microsoft is more interested in selling Virtual Server, so they make Virtual PC available for free to get their foot in a door on which VMWare Workstation is leaning heavily.

On a similar vein, knowing that Microsoft has a strong incentive and ability to get Virtual Server known and used, VMWare decided a few months ago to differentiate VMWare GSX from ESX (their enterprise server product), and to make it free as an enticement to play with server-level virtualization so they could upsell to enterprise-level virtualization.

Both companies made certain products free in an attempt to upsell to their respective primary product lines. Microsoft loses little for giving away Virtual PC because they have so little of the market as it stands. VMWare loses little for giving away Server because it made up a small portion of its own sales. Microsoft possibly gains sales of Virtual Server, while VMWare possibly gains sales of ESX.

Re:Virtual PC

[RLiegh]

Thank you! It's interesting to note that you can get either Virtual PC 2004 (sp1) or Virtual PC 2005 (sp2).

I'm sure there are other differences, but the largest one I can think of is that Virtual PC 2005 has one more service pack than Virtual PC 2004; Virtual PC 2004 officially runs on Windows 2000 (with sp4) - Virtual PC 2005 requires Server 2003 or (possibly) XP Pro.

Re:Virtual PC

[Johnny O]

I wouldnt mind trying out the Linux version. If it works, I never pass up good software.

Where is it?

Re:Virtual PC

[Yaztromo]

If you are not aware of it (I wasn't until earlier today) Microsoft is now putting Virtual PC 04 and 07 [still in beta] out for free.

Just in case anyone is wondering, it appears that Microsoft's VirtualPC for Mac has not been released for free as its Windows brethern have been. FWIW.

Yaz.

Re:Virtual PC

[fermion]

Of course it is only free on the PC. By releasing the virtualization free, they are playing the same game they did with the browser. Insure that MS WIndows is always the base of the PC. There is a big risk with virtualization that some other OS will be the base, and MS Windows will only run as a virtual system, as is happening on the Intel Mac.

From the looks of it, I would guess that MS is going to the same thing they did with VFP. First, move the interesting bits to a new products, as they have already effectively done with VPC, and then end support on the competing platform.

If virtualization is really the future, I cannot see why people would put up with all the extra crap in MS Windows, when all they need is a base OS on which to virtualize. Wouldn't a costumized *nix be better at the bottom, wih MS Windows only running as needed? I mean you are not going to playing games at the server level, are you?

Re:Virtual PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, both Virtual PC 2004 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 are available for free:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default .mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtu alserver/default.mspx

Unlike the free versions of VM Player and VMWare Server, you can not only run existing Virtual Machines, but also create them. Of course, the M$ stuff only supports M$ guest and host OS's.

Interesting to note though is that you VM Player can import a M$ Virtual PC or Server created VM.

Re:Virtual PC

[w3bgeek]

Not quite, as MS Virtual Server is also free.

Re:Virtual PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, you can create VMs in the free VMWare Server, just not Player.

Re:Virtual PC

[Martin Blank]

I stand corrected. It had been my understanding that Virtual Server was not free, and in looking around, it seems that I missed the change from back in April that removed the cost.

Thank you for the information.

Re:Virtual PC

[Tony Hoyle]

There's other reasons to have another OS at the base - stability, speed, available memory...

My VMs run on a debian install completely stripped of everything not required to run vmware itself. That means much less to go wrong, nothing eating up CPU cycles needed for the servers, and the OS itself takes up very little memory overhead.

You simply can't strip VirtualPC down that much - no matter what you're doing you still have the GUI, memory usage and hard disk usage, of a Windows OS which means the VMs have less to play with.

Re:Virtual PC

[zerocommazero]

VMWare made their ESX,GSX products free a few months ago. And yes I'm sure it's in direct retaliation to Microsoft entering the virtual OS market.

VMWare's main focus is now total virtualization meaning their new product doesn't require a host OS. This means you don't have to purchase a server OS from M$ (if they are your vendor choice) just to run these virtuals on and waste more resources. That product is their bread and butter and something MS would be hard pressed to follow in since it would work against their server OS sales, IMO. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Re:Virtual PC

[cfuse]

Well, if I could get past that retarded abortion called 'Microsoft Passport' I might actually try it. Straight - download - link, not brain surgery Microsoft!

I for one...

[Kesch]

welcome our new virtualized overlords and their free gifts.

(Sorry, it had to be said.)

Re:I for one...

[Jerk City Troll]

(No, actually, it didn't.)

Where will this end?

[matt me]

This anyone find this concept of Mac on Intels, virtual platforms, and emulation makes them physically sick? I feel like I'm looking into a pair of mirrors, staring into infinity. Yes, that's it I'm giving up computers. Goodbye everyone.

Re:Where will this end?

[Anonymous Coward]

This anyone find this concept of grammar on slashdot makes them dyslexic feel? Everyone! goodbye

Re:Where will this end?

[Yaa 101]

It only just started...

what end?

With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[RLiegh]

With this, apparently I can create new machines, make snapshots and suspend machines to disk. Doesn't making this a free download make vmplayer redundant?

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[jhfry]

Doesn't making this a free download make vmplayer redundant?

I wouldn't say redundant... if I want to distribute an application sample using vmware, I might want to send the player with it instead of server which might be too complicated for those I am sending the virtual OS to.

I do have to wonder what VMware is hoping to get out of this... Basically they are only selling the support and management products and completely opening up the VM end of their business. Is this to stop the mass migration to XEN?

Oh and how does the sever product compare to Workstation... is it the same?

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[gbjbaanb]

I think VMware realise that there are a lot of free virtualisation products out there, and so they had a choice of entering the free market or slowly dying out - something like Novell, Corel, Netscape etc.

Once we all get used to virtualisation, then the big companies that will start using this and see the benefits will buy the big, expensive ESX Server product.. and the support, and the tools and add-ons. For the rest of us, we get free toys so everyone's happy.

Xen is a different product, its a virtualisation tool, but it allows you to split 1 OS into several running 'instances'. VMWare is a 'wrapper' that allows you to run several different OSes side by side. Which one you'd go for depends on your requirements.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[UNIX_Meister]

Oh and how does the sever product compare to Workstation... is it the same?

VMware seems to put all the "good stuff" in Workstation and then it filters down into the GSX, ESX and now VMware Server products. So workstation is at 5.5.x and has features that are not available yet, but most importantly, the format of the virtual machines is backwards compatible with VMware Server. That is, you must create a legacy vm in workstation if you want to use it elsewhere. However, they are all upwards compatable so that anything will run on workstation. Just a gotcha to keep an eye out for.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[Afrosheen]

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but they're releasing what was known as GSX for free. ESX, which is the super deluxe product, still costs plenty of money. GSX has limitations compared to ESX which are detailed here http://www.vmware.com/products/server/server_comp. html . At it's most basic, ESX is a linux 'underhost' which runs on the bare metal and has a web interface where you configure virtual servers and run them on top of this layer. The linux layer is completely hidden from the hosts and the actual hardware is abstracted. On the other hand, GSX requires a host OS to run on and therefore inherits the limitations of whatever OS it's installed on top of. There are other limitations as well but some light reading at vmware's site will clue you in.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[A Bookworm]

-----
Xen is a different product, its a virtualisation tool, but it allows you to split 1 OS into several running 'instances'. VMWare is a 'wrapper' that allows you to run several different OSes side by side. Which one you'd go for depends on your requirements.
-----

I believe that you are incorrect there, especially about Xen.

VMWare Workstation and VMWare Server are host/guest based virtualiztion products. When you boot the computer it launches an OS (Windows, Linux, whatever), then VMWare Server runs on that OS. VMWare Server then sets up environments for guest OSs to run. Because of this layered setup (Host OS | VMWare Server | Guest OS) your guest OSs tend to be slower.

Xen, however, is a "hypervisor" type virtualiztion product, somewhat similar to VMWare Server ESX. You don't boot to Linux, you boot to Xen (or ESX). Xen (or ESX) then boots each OS in its own environment (Xen calls them "domains"). Each OS runs on its own, with Xen (or ESX) handling resource allocation/sharing/conflicts. Because of this lower-level approach, the OSs tend to run faster, depending on how hard you're taxing each one.

Currently, however, Xen only works with a slightly modified kernel. Therefore, you can't properly run Windows inside a Xen domain (developers have done it, to prove it can be done, but they can't share their work because that would violate the Windows EULA). With the virtualization technologies coming from Intel and AMD, however, Xen will be able to run unmodified Windows kernels in Xen domains.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[Pedersen]

I do have to wonder what VMware is hoping to get out of this... Basically they are only selling the support and management products and completely opening up the VM end of their business. Is this to stop the mass migration to XEN?

Actually, they're not even close to opening up the vm portion of their business. They are opening a specific segment of their business, and, in turn, llikely to gain much more business. So, let's check out their listing of free, shall we?

VMWare Player Somebody sends you a group of files which make up a virtual machine. Now, you can run the stuff in that virtual machine. However, you may not change the settings. Don't like how much RAM the VM uses? Too bad. Oh, you may also not create new virtual machines, just run ones that have been made for you. VMWare Server This, basically, replaces VMWare GSX Server. Major difference? It also runs on Linux now (GSX only ran on Windows). You can create VMs, but you may not limit them in certain ways. For comparison, in ESX, you may limit the amount of CPU usage, and in the amount of disk bandwidth usage, etc. Server (and GSX) you are not able to do this. There are other limitations. Major benefits of VMWare Server? You can run multiple guest OSes as services, needing no monitor/mouse/keyboard to make them work. This is wonderful for remote/headless installs.

So, what's left for them? More than you would think. First, for features only available under VMWare ESX/Virtual Infrastructure

VMWare HA Automatically move VMs from crashed hosts to still running hosts in seconds. Reboot crashed VMs automatically. etc. VMWare DRS Move VMs from high load to low load hosts with no downtime VMotion Oh yes, you can move VMs around from server to server without any downtime. How sweet is that?

And now, VMWare Workstation

Creation You can create new virtual machines, something which VMWare Player does not allow you to do. Configuration Change Change memory, add virtual disks, etc. Something which VMWare Player denies you as well. Virtual Teams How about a whole cluster of virtual machines which can start and run, and work together, as one unit, instead of just a bunch of individual virtual machines which have to be manually started/stopped? Perfect for demo'ing complex apps on multiple (x86) platforms

So, what do they get out of it? They get to tease you with the good stuff. And when you're ready for it, you'll come back and buy it. Because it really is that good. And no, I don't work for them. I'm just a very happy customer.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[SirTalon42]

Xen doesn't split "1 OS into several running 'instances'" (which is what Solaris's containers or Linux's VServer or FreeBSD's jails do). Xen vitalizes all OSes that are run (except the Dom0 OS is allowed to tell the hypervisor what to do) which is very similar to how VMware ESX server works. Xen also provides many of the same features that the VMware product family provides (like live migration).

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[tetrode]

Well, yes and no.

Technically, you are right - one could just download the VMware Server and install it - however (and I recently installed this at home) this takes some technical expertise, root/Administrator access and an hour or two. And if you do it wrong, everyone can access and screw up your vm's.

I haven't installed the player, but I'm assuming that this is a Install -> Next -> Next -> Finish type of install and you (and only you) can run a vm.

Much easier for the general public.

Mark

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[rdejean]

Heh. GSX has always run on linux...

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[Dalroth]

No, not really. VMWare Player gives you near native performance when doing most GUI operations (non-3D). VMWare server let's you connect to the machines remotely.

The problem is, that even when you are on the machine that is hosting the VM, VMWare server still feels like you're connecting over a slow network connection. It doesn't have any of the GUI speed that VMWare Player/Workstation does. So, if you want near native GUI speed, stick with workstation/player versions. If you need remote administration capabilities, go with the server version.

I'd like to see a hybrid of the two myself. I'd like to run natively when I can, but still be able to adminster the machine remotely (as well as have the virtual machines automatically start at boot). Unfortunately, I haven't found out a way yet to install Workstation and Server side by side.

Bryan

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[Pedersen]

I stand corrected. For some reason, I thought that GSX was a Windows only product. Don't know how I got that impression, either.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[jrcamp]

You can change the memory allocation in VMWare Player. Player -> Troubleshoot -> Change memory allocation. I'd say putting it under troubleshoot is rather far-fetched. I guess for lesser tech people they might consider not having enough memory a "problem" which should be troubleshooted, but I see it more as a configuration option.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[nurb432]

"completely opening up the VM end of their business."

No, they still sell the high end ESX and a few other products. Using this as a 'gateway product'.

Apparently there was just not enough money to continue the low end product line as a commercial product. Hopefully they dont drop the low end totally.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[FromellaSlob]

Graphics on Server should perform just as well as on Player. If you find they don't, you may not be making correct use of the "VMWare Tools", which install on the guest OS and provide optimised graphics drivers for the virtual graphics adapter. In any case, a virtualized interface is never going to be ideal. The best solution is to ignore the VM console and use whatever remote admin facilities the Guest OS has. I run XP Pro under VMWare Server and connect via RDP. This gives pretty much native performance when running locally. You can do the same thing with player, but you're stuck with a useless VM console window you don't need.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[tlacuache]

Has anyone seen any performance differences between the two (Player and Server)? I installed server and it seemed to run quite a bit more slowly than player did loading the same VM. I'll admit the host machine isn't the beefiest (2GHz Athlon with 768 MB of RAM), and that's probably my problem, but I'd still like to know if anybody else has noticed any differences.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[Locutus]

The VMPlayer will only PLAY VMs, VMserver, as you stated, let's you create VMs. The other difference is that the VMplayer runs one VM instance where the VMserver is designed to run multiple VMs all managed from a common( tabbed ) UI. I've seen it said here that there are preformance differences between the VMplayer and VMserver. I don't know about that but I do know that if you don't load up the VMWareTools for each VM, they will run quite slow.

I think the advantage of the VMplayer is that it's an easier install and easier to run a VM from. And therefore, it makes an easy platform for the VirtualAppliances VMWare has been promoting.

LoB

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[gbjbaanb]

quite right, thanks. I was thinking of UserMode Linux or one of the other ones - god knows there are so many of the damn virtualisation hosts out there nowadays!

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[jimicus]

However VMWare provides something Xen doesn't.

A user interface.

Seriously. I use Xen myself, it's great, but I still had to figure a lot more out than I did with VMWare Server. If the object of the exercise when virtualising your servers is "make life easier", it makes no sense at all to use something which is rough around the edges.

The developers behind Xen have set up a company and intend to produce a product with a user interface, but AFAICT the free basic edition won't benefit from this.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[Kuxman]

are you usinig VMware Tools? That'll provide a big boost when it comes to interfacing with the VM through Server

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[tlacuache]

I am using VMWare Tools, yes.

Actually, since I posted last I was googling and found a few threads (one example) that indicate that performance when using VMWare Server and connecting to it via its Console program (even when connected locally) is worse than when using VMWare Workstation or Player because you're basically connected over a socket via some VNC/rdesktop-like protocol (don't know the specifics, sorry). When its just running in the background as a server the performance is fine, it's when you're using it interactively with the Console that you'll notice a difference.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[stan_freedom]

I played around with the beta VMware server and found the disk I/O was very slow on a reasonably equipped Dell server running CentOS 4.2. I used dd to do some timing tests and then compared to native dd. There was a roughly 80% performance hit. I then loaded Xen and ran the same tests. The performance hit was only around 4%. However, from a simplicity standpoint, VMware was much easier to install. In fact, I was hoping to use Zimbra on top of Xen, but I have been having a lot of problems finding compatible Zen/Zimbra builds. I may end up using VMware and take the I/O hit just so I can complete this project.

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[jimicus]

Probably because "a nice user interface" doesn't tend to appear anywhere near as high on the list of "things this program needs" in the itch-scratching crowd with both the time and inclination to do something about it.

Once you have a basic user interface which does what it needs to (think: the command line tools Xen has now) that's quite often where things stop, because to add significantly to that is a helluva lot of work and by the time you've worked out the system you're building a UI for to the point where you can build a UI, the need to do so has dropped through the floor because to get to that point you first had to figure out how the existing console-based tools worked in explicit detail.

Very cool!

[spazimodo]

I love VMWare and am stoked about this as it will allow for use of virtualization where ESX would have been too expensive (GSX was always too expensive :) )

I've thought a great idea along with this would be a super light linux distro to run as the host OS (an almost ESX server - obviously ESX has performance advantages since the kernel is running directly without an intervening OS layer)

Re:Very cool!

[tmasssey]

You have this backwards. Virtual Server is similar to GSX, the non-dedicated VM server software that ran on Windows or Linux. ESX is the dedicated VM server software that runs on its own operating system, and costs boatloads of money.

Re:Very cool!

[spazimodo]

Yeah sorry I should have explained.. I considered GSX expensive because it still cost a lot and gave you none of the stability/performance benefits of ESX - if the host OS took a dive, all your VMs did too. The new server is basically a free, stripped down version of GSX.

Re:Very cool!

[imemyself]

How is VMware Server it stripped down from GSX? I'm running one of the "beta" versions of VMware Server on an old box with 1 VM running, and also have GSX running on a server with 3 VM's running, and no major differences between GSX and VMware server have jumped out at me. I think VMware will even offer support for VMware server (for a fee of course).

Re:Very cool!

[misleb]

So what is the essential difference between Server and GSX? Why is Server just now coming out of beta?

Re:Very cool!

[TimMann]

Essentially, VMware Server is a continuation of the GSX line, with Server 1.0 being the followon to whatever the last version of GSX was (3.x.y -- I forget what exactly). The name change and version number reset was to celebrate the product line becoming free.

One difference from previous practice is that GSX 4 (if it existed) would probably have had full feature parity with Workstation 5. But Server 1.0 didn't get all the WS 5 features added, since we still want people to buy Workstation! However, everything that was in GSX 3 is still in Server 1.0, plus many improvements.

[I work for VMware but am not speaking officially. This is just my understanding.]

Re:Very cool!

[misleb]

If I had paid for the latest version of GSX, I'd be pretty annoyed.

-matthew

Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[leeum]

Check out Virtual Appliances. Basically, there are people who've already fully configured environments in a virtual machine so you can just pick up the free (as in beer) VMWare Player product and run them.

Why would you want to do that? I use a virtual machine to browse the Web - that way, my computer doesn't get bogged down by spyware (only the virtual machine does) and it's much more painless to simply purge a spyware-ridden virtual machine and start afresh than it is for your main computer.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[tashanna]

2 GB USB Drive - $40
VMWare Player for Linux & Windows - $0
A good Linux distro - $0 (yes, you may flame away)
Google Browser Sync - $0
Blowing away anything that somehow made it onto your system - $priceless

-Tash
Vrooommm...

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Valdrax]

Google Browser Sync - $0

Polishing up your own rsync scripts - $0
Not having all your browser history and cookies handed over to a company's who's entire revenue steam is targetted advertising - priceless

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[geminidomino]

2 GB USB Drive - $40

Where where where? Gimme gimme!

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Joe The Dragon]

You get a firewire / usb case for $40
firewire is better for this

this one is only $29.97 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool s/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1631999&CatId=1204

$64.99 with Oxford 911 Chipset
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool s/item-details.asp?EdpNo=876439&CatId=0

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[poulbailey]

I like the idea of virtual appliances in theory, but what's to stop the anonymous guys who uploaded the files from filling them with all sorts of nasty stuff? Do VMware audit the submissions? Can they realistically audit the submissions?

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[chill]

The GP was unclear. A 2 Gb USB drive implies a memory stick, not a USB-connected hard drive. Cases and firewire and not an option here as he's really talking about somehing the size of your thumb -- not your whole hand. Also, USB/firewire drives usually require separate power -- limiting their portability.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[sharpone]

I don't know about you, but I get paid more than $0/hr to code ;)

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[chill]

Well, you can get a 1 Gb PQI for $19.99.
http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4359955?site=sr:S EARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

The PNY 2 Gb is $35.99 after $10 mail-in rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820178085

NewEgg has a couple others that hit the $40 mark w/o rebates.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[timeOday]

it's much more painless to simply purge a spyware-ridden virtual machine and start afresh than it is for your main computer.

In fact, VMWare Workstation lets you create checkpoints, and quickly revert back by clicking a button. But I don't think the free versions do that.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[jbarr]

Great idea. But doesn't the player require "installation"? It's not just a standalone file.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Kadin2048]

Also, VMWare's support -- I'm told -- for FireWire is limited and/or not present, and USB 2.0 also is pretty poor. I don't know if that means you can't run a VM off of a mounted volume that originates on a Firewire/USB 2.0 device, or that the guest OS just can't "see" the FireWire bus, but you might want to be careful before designing something around VMWare and FireWire or USB 2.0.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Valdrax]

I don't know about you, but I don't get paid for my personal projects at home.
If that's different for you, then I am intrigued by your job and would like to subscribe to your resume site.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[TimMann]

The guest OS can't see the FireWire bus, but there's no reason you couldn't put a VM on a FireWire drive as long as the drive works with the host OS. VMware hosted products (i.e., products other than ESX) go through the host OS to read/write virtual disks, configuration files, etc.

Any USB device you plug into the host can be connected to either the guest or to the host. But if you are putting a VM on a USB drive, you'd connect it to the host.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Courageous]

Yes. And don't underestimate the "blowing away" thing. We're not just talking unwelcome spyware here, but rather fully malicious, total compromises of your systems. VMWare, configured properly, is suitable for cyber containment. We used to use it as part of our bench analysis technique of malicious software. I.e., we'd deliberately run this shit and then just "roll back" the install. Voila. Malicious code: gone.

C//

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[geminidomino]

I am forever denied mod points, but help yourself to the equivalent warm-fuzzy of a "+1, Informative" on me.

Thank you.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Decker-Mage]

While I most certainly am (one of?) the leading candidate(s) for most security conscious (paranoid more line) around here, jsut witness my bastion defense reply up above, many of the Virtual Player images are from the groups/companies that make the product. Others are contributed by people I know of, if not know, from the virtualization scene. Actually I'd be more worried about some major distro server being hijacked/cracked than someone surreptitiously slipping a trap-doored or back-doored VP image upload on VMWare. Ooops, already happened. Again!

If you are as paranoid as I am, roll your own from GenToo, but make sure that your source if authenticated (gpg/pgp signed at the least).

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Spliffster]

"Also, VMWare's support -- I'm told -- for FireWire is limited and/or not present, and USB 2.0..."

Doesn't matter. only the host os is supposed to support it, then you "mount" the partitions to your guest oses from the host os.

However, if you need, you can always try to mount it in the guest, my usb 2 pendrive on linux was sucessfully detected by the winxp guest os (vmware server beta which is now at 1.0).

Cheers,
-S

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Chabil Ha']

I know for sure that VMWare can see and use USB 2.0 devices, however, the support for 2.0 speeds is not there--at least in Windows. Fore example, if I plug in a USB 2.0 flash drive, Windows will know that it is a 2.0, but it acts as if it has been plugged into a legacy USB port--which means it will suck for speed.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[sharpone]

Actually, my main personal project does pay me, as it involves currency trading systems. So time wasted writing backup scripts, when I can install some extension/script/application to do that job for me, is time not spent trying to make more $$$ in the currency markets ;)

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Wolfrider]

--Thanks for the plug. :)

--Allow me to recommend my Squid virtual appliance (doesn't have Tools installed, but quite handy when doing Win updates -- and also blocks pr0n and ads. Highly configurable, and also included FREE support scripts.)

http://www.tlm-project.org/public/distributions/vm ware-squidserver--debian/v1.0-20060224/

Support forum linky:
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messag eID=359128

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Valdrax]

I can understand that, but it's a one-time hit to keep your browsing history private. Google Browser Sync is best meant for using multiple comupters at different locations and it overkill and too much of a privacy compromise for syncing data on the same machine or on the same subnet in my opinion.

Then again, I guess it's all what you consider your highest priority. Privacy's up there for me.

A few quick use cases

[Outland Traveller]

A few data points:

- Running occasional mainstream / corporate 32bit windows applications on 64bit linux with more reliability than WINE.

- Testing / Exploring software in a sandbox

- Cases where one wants to be able to snapshot the state of an OS and roll back to it later.

- Running corporate VPN software that annoyingly insists on overwriting your local network routes.

- Trying out new OS versions / distributions safely.

- Getting better portability / disaster protection by putting services inside VMs isolated from specific hardware configurations.

What's the license agreement?

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to download server beta a few days ago to try it, and AFTER filling in my contact details I got the licence terms that said no commercial use under any circumstances. This was a shame since I wanted to run a couple of windows-ony apps under Linux on my work laptop to save dual-booting.

Have they changed those conditions? I still don't see terms before filling out the contact info, and don't feel like filling them in again only to feel cheated again.

Re:What's the license agreement?

[Pedersen]

I got the licence terms that said no commercial use under any

I just re-read the license. That is not a restriction in the use of VMWare Server that I could find at all.

Re:What's the license agreement?

[nurb432]

I never saw any restrictions in the final EULA.

Never read the betas, didnt really care since it was 'testing' anyway.

The stated upgrade path for GSX is the free 'vmware server' so it would be really hard to restrict its use and get away with it.

Re:What's the license agreement?

[illumin8]

I went to download server beta a few days ago to try it, and AFTER filling in my contact details I got the licence terms that said no commercial use under any circumstances.

This is total BS. Their license agreement has never said that, and as a matter of fact, their FAQ makes it pretty clear:

Q: Who can use VMware Server?

A: The benefits of server virtualization can be realized by a company of any size -- even small companies with just a few servers.

This comes at a good time

[dargaud]

Today I diched Windows from my laptop and was right in the process of installing Kubuntu. Unfortunately there are a few Windows apps I still need and that have postponed my use of Linux on the desktop for a long time although I've been using it on servers for quite a while. I keep hearing of those emulator/virtualizers/whatnots but can't really figure out what is the difference between them: VMware, Win4Lin, Crossover, Wine... Do you install Windows after or before Linux ? How do you install Windows apps ? Etc... Is there a comparision of them somewhere (I've searched in the past) ?

Re:This comes at a good time

[Gr33nNight]

Well, this is what I have at home currently: A Windows XP box, with VMWare player loaded with Kubuntu. I am not a Linux geek, so I have the VMWare player to learn linux without screwing with my host OS. And since Windows is the host OS I can still play all the games I want.

Now you can do it the opposite. Have linux be your host OS and install Windows in a VM session. As for apps, your VM sessions can see any cds that you put in your CD drive, so installing applications is a snap.

Hoped that helped.

Re:This comes at a good time

[xilet]

Those are seperate systems. There are virtualization applications (VMware, VirtualPC) which run as applications and will emulate an entire computer as the program so you can install a fresh OS on top of it and run it in its own little happy sandbox. There are also programs such as wine, crossover, etc, which emulate windows from inside *nix, so they give you the nessecery dll files and hooks to be able to run Windows binaries on unix-based systems. So if you wanted to play Everquest/Wow/Civ4 from your Linux box you would use Wine. If you wanted to run a Linux server for testing from your Windows box you would use VMware.

Re:This comes at a good time

[jharv13]

You install Linux first. Then you install VMware (Server). Then you create virtual machines with reckless abandon, and install Windows into one of them. From there, you can install any Windows application on the Windows virtual machine.

Be aware that you need a legitimate license/key to install/activate Windows XP; after a P2V (physical-to-virtual) conversion of a WinXP box, I had to make the obligatory call to Microsoft and promise that I didn't have -that-version- of XP installed on any other system.

Otherwise, I'd suggest just downloading VMware Server, and playing with it for a while. The first time you see the POST (power-on self test) and BIOS screens of the VM it's like you've stepped into another dimension; your mind reels at the possibilities. Tiny servers for all sorts of DNS/LDAP/SAMBA bits. Honeypots. Network IDS. Cookieless web browsing. Knoppix instances for whatever you can think of. It's endless.

Nuggets: The virtual machine shares (by default) the CD drive of the host; but you can point to an .ISO file instead. You can point the drive to a REMOTE drive, of someone who's connected in through the virtual console, so they (the remote end) can have the CD they need to install from in their hands, instead of in the host's CD drive. Same with floppies. The network bits are similar; a private net, a NAT'ed net, or a bridged net. Whatever you need.

Just install it. Let the possibilities wash over you.

\harv
--
How does this sig thing work?

Re:This comes at a good time

[smash]

You've been able to run windows as a guest O/S on linux using vmware since about 1997-1998...

Ah, but...

[jd]

With VMWare, you can have more than one overlord in the same body at the same time!

Re:Ah, but...

[sharkey]

Does VMWare support the hosting of Thetans?

The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[mmell]

and have been stated elsewhere in this thread.

What seems to be missing is good reasons for using a VM at home. I can think of several:

1) Seems a lot easier than dual-booting (for those of us with SO's who aren't comfortable with Linux)

2) Makes a good home lab for what is rapidly becoming another standard tool of the IT trade

3) Hardware speeds are approaching the level where (except for gaming and certain compute-intensive applications) most home machines are quite powerful enough to run multiple partitions without the user even noticing a slowdown.

4) Shiney!

5) Free (as in beer)!

Feel free to add to this list - it's a long way from being complete.

Incidentally, I wonder if Windows Vista will run under VM? I'm guessing yes (as anything else would mean that Microsoft is cutting their own throat).

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[TheRealFixer]

I've got the Vista beta running on VMware Workstation. They actually have a guest OS option for Vista, but there's a big "experimental" warning on it. However, it seems to work fine. Slow, of course, because the Vista beta is a HUGE resource hog. But it runs...

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[GuruBuckaroo]

Vista (the beta, anyway) does run under VMWare Server - but it's really slow. And, of course, forget about the shiney new front-end (aero, or whatever they're calling it now). No accelerated graphics in a VM. Tried the Vista Beta a few weeks ago - and was disgusted. Every time I opened a control panel, applied a change, or (almost) clicked a mouse-button, it would ask me to confirm it - because it's changing the system. Ooooh... duh.

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[Dalroth]

Honestly, I think you missed the most important use:

6) Lock your significant other/children into a sand box. When they inevitably screw windows up, roll back to a previous working version.

Bryan

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[oni]

Seems a lot easier than dual-booting (for those of us with SO's who aren't comfortable with Linux)

and it's a lot more powerful than that too. The real power of a VM imho is that you set up a machine seperately from the hardware. I like to have a little web server on my home network. I bet most slashdotters have a web server at home. I can't even remember how many times I've installed debian and configured apache. The thing is, I'm all the time taking my little server apart, taking parts out of it for my main computer or whatever. Each time I have to reinstall the OS.

No more. Now I have a VM with a web server set up just the way I like it. I have an image of that VM burned off on DVD. I can set up a brand new machine, install a bare bones OS in an hour or so, then I install VMWare and copy the image of my server, boot it up the image and I'm in business. The old config still works.

So basically I now have an abstraction layer between the server and the hardware. My example was simplified but the principle is sound.

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[JavaRob]

Then your little brother notices that the router keeps logs... "MOM!!!!"

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[Saeger]

Why so much wasted effort just to hide some pr0n from mommy & daddy | a roomate?

Stick it in ~/pr0n, or MAYBE ~/.pr0n, and quit being a sneaky hypocrite.

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[tweek]

This is exactly what I did when I rebuilt my server. Mind you I purchased a VMTN subscription so I'm running GSX but I rebuilt my server with CentOS 4 and GSX. I have 3 VMs running currently (this is a dual P3 with 2GB of memory):

- CentOS 4 Samba PDC
- CentOS 4 oxylbox web server for my media adapter (nfs mount of the big storage on the GSX host)
- pfSense as my firewall.

I have two nics and one is brought up with no IP. It's on my public connection and assigned to the VM running pfSense.

I love it and the only thing I have to do if I want to wipe the box for some reason or upgrade the hardware is shutdown the VMs, back them up and move them to the new server. Now that ESX supports the new VMX files, I may do just that except install ESX for that extra oomph. Honestly the majority of my VMs are 4GB each so I won't need that much local DASD. I can still keep the big boy with all my SATA storage around as a dedicated NAS.

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[fm6]

Seems a lot easier than dual-booting ....

And when you're transferring data between apps that run on different OSs, much faster.

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[Saint Stephen]

On my gaming machine with 2GB of ram, I mostly stay in Debian, and when I need to develop in Windows, I give 1.2 GB to a Win2003 VM. That way I can keep browsing the web and doing email in Linux and not have to suffocate in Windows. Windows is such a POS, it is much pleasanter when it's confined in a box and you can mouse out of it :-)

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[StikyPad]

Why so much wasted effort just to hide some pr0n from mommy & daddy | a roomate?

Stick it in ~/pr0n, or MAYBE ~/.pr0n, and quit being a sneaky hypocrite.

I know this will come as a surprise, but some of us are hiding this stuff from our kids. Embarrassed? Not really. I just don't think 10 is an appropriate age to watch porn.

EOF

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[Relgar]

Regarding #3 (modern h/w is fast enough for almost any app), I thought the same. What I discovered was that while the CPU efficiency is fine, writing out of the VM to the host (e.g. Samba share through a local-only subnet, VMWare's virtual folders) is pretty slow. This made it annoying to work with large files.

Also, playing movies inside a VM doesn't work that well. My best result was running VLC inside a Windows VM, but there was noticeable flicker. Music was okay, but tended to skip a little when doing other activities.

In the end, I decided to use my host OS (Ubuntu) as normal, and run the Windows VM for key Windows apps (like my employer's remote access software). I also intend to use a VM to replace my headless Debian server running on an old K7 (not used for workstation/desktop type activities).

Amusing anecdote, I'd swear the virtualized Windows runs faster than the Windows host OS it replaced. It's probably the cleanliness of the registry, etc.

The above is all on a P4 2.8 (Prescott) with 3GB RAM, btw.

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[Relgar]

Hmm... FWIW, I just upgraded from VMWare Server Beta (whatever version was around last week) to the full release, and it seems noticeably faster when writing out from the Windows VM to the Linux host via Samba. It's still not quite as fast as doing it locally - perhaps a 50% performance hit? - but acceptable. Maybe it's the deactivation of the debugging lines, maybe I did something different this install. I'll have to try playing movies again.

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[Achromatic1978]

Y'arr! I'm a pi-rate!

Right... your home setup has two Windows Server 2003's, one running Exchange 2003.

Y'arr.

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[AnyoneEB]

I have switched hard drives into otherwise new computers (or even the hard drive new, but copied over) with Windows 98, Windows XP, and Debian Linux without reinstalling the OS without any problems. Why did you?

Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[heson]

Then you probably need to run the vm out of a truecrypt device, or get shocked by how fast they learn to operate a computer in unusual ways.

Re:When are they going to add

[BiteTheHand]

Right now it's in an experimental stage. Check out more info here: Experimental Support for Direct3D

So many problems, though

[Lord Ender]

I love this software, but the Linux client really is neglected. The documentation for Linux is not really there. There is no decent configuration tool for Linux. There are many bugs. For example, if you do any port forwarding, you must edit some nat.conf file. And if you reconfigure anything after that with vmware-config.pl, it completely wipes out all your changes to nat.conf without warning. I spent so much time dealing with these types of bugs while testing the beta, I should have simply purchased another solution.

Re:So many problems, though

[LDoggg_]

I love this software, but the Linux client really is neglected. The documentation for Linux is not really there. There is no decent configuration tool for Linux. There are many bugs. For example, if you do any port forwarding, you must edit some nat.conf file. And if you reconfigure anything after that with vmware-config.pl, it completely wipes out all your changes to nat.conf without warning. I spent so much time dealing with these types of bugs while testing the beta, I should have simply purchased another solution.

I haven't noticed any significant difference in functionality on either vmware workstation on windows vs. linux or vmware server on windows vs. linux.

Also I haven't found much reason to set up a vmnet for NAT. What I typically do is set up a bridged vmnet for each physical NIC and then a couple of host only networks.

The key is to set up a vm like ipcop to do your NATing and routing between your physical networks and host only networks. Put three virtual NICs in the ipcop vm, one on a bridge for the red "WAN" interface, one on a host-only for the green "LAN" interface, and one host-only for the orange "DMZ" interface. You can easily set up all your routing rules using ipcop's web interface.
If you add cop plus to ipcop you can even do web content filtering with dansguardian and squidguard. It has a pretty small footprint and is a nice addition to a home server.

BTW, there is one application of a NAT vmnet that I could see as kind of a cool thing: Using vmware player on an autorun cd to have a vm run in NATed mode without having to install the vmware player on the host

Re:So many problems, though

[Bert64]

I always used host-only networking in vmware, and let linux handle the natting and port forwarding... I didn't even know vmware could do port forwarding!
Vmware's implementation of nat is quite easy to crash, if your doing a heavy portscan over a vmware nat interface it can sometimes go tits up... The same thing happens if a guest windows machine gets infected with some kind of ddos drone which begins an attack.
As to the linux client being neglected, the linux client is the original one, vmware was originally designed for linux and the windows version was always an afterthought... the linux version always seems to be a fair bit quicker too (especially with networking)

Re:So many problems, though

[Aranth Brainfire]

So wait, a LINUX program's configuration involves editing obscure .conf files? How could they let that happen? And the beta had bugs? That's it, I'm never using this company's products.

Re:So many problems, though

[Lord Ender]

This software is not designed to be controlled by editing conf files. There is a big difference between editing conf files that were designed to be edited, and editing conf files that were meant to be controlled by a GUI that nobody bothered porting.

The very latest beta had many bugs. There is no doubt this version has these same bugs. That is a problem, expecially for servers.

Also, Linux is not an acronym.

Some questions

[Matlo]

If I install Vmware with a linux host and a windows guest, can I have Skype 2.0 running on it, accessing my mic and my webcam? (I know I should use Ekiga instead, but...)

And would my wireless pcmcia card, that is not recognised by linux, be working under this artificial windows? Can I use the usual windows drivers with the guest vmware windows?

Re:Some questions

[palswim]

As far as your wireless card goes, to my understanding, Linux would have to know what to do with it before it could virtualize it for Windows, so I think you're out of luck there. I would bet you could get your webcam and mic working (mic for sure), though.

Re:Some questions

[SirTalon42]

If the wireless card was a USB wireless adapter you could give the guest machine raw access to the device which should then work (then you could do reverse sharing pretty much). Since yours is a pcmcia card though you could always try using ndiswrapper.

Re:Some questions

[Bert64]

The guest OS can use it's own drivers for USB devices (which most likely includes your webcam)
For PCMCIA you'd have no joy, since the host OS would need to support it, on the other hand you could use ndiswrapper to get linux to support it using the windows drivers. (out of interest, what type of wireless card is it? most chipsets are supported nowadays, just not always in the default kernels)
Your mic will work fine if it's connected to your soundcard in the standard way... If it's a USB device then it should work too, same as your webcam.

VMware Server, Workstation, GSX, etc.

[palswim]

So, I know VMware Player is a gimped version of Workstation. Where does VMware Server fall in line here? Their website lists it under a semi-separate product category ("For 1st-time Users"), but what functionality does this not have that Workstation does?

Re:VMware Server, Workstation, GSX, etc.

[neurovish]

VMWare Server is GSX.

Re:VMware Server, Workstation, GSX, etc.

[Tiger22]

VMWare Server is a server so the VMs running on it are accessible from other machines by running a client tool. With Workstation and Player you can only access and use the VMs from the machine they are running on - no remote connectivity (unless you run a client connectivity tool like VNC fom within the VM). Workstation is more sophisticated (mutiple snapshot capablitities, VM Teams, etc) with the exception that the VMs cannot be accessed remotely.

Re:VMware Server, Workstation, GSX, etc.

[neurovish]

...and if you're still interested in the difference between Server/GSX and Workstation here are a few:
VM runs in the background, and you connect to it using a client. In workstation, you loaded up VMWare Workstation, ran your VM, shut down your VM, then closed workstation. With VMWare server you run the VMWare client and connect to the server running on localhost or another system and then manage it as you would in workstation. When you close the server client, the VM keeps running in the background. It is also more powerful as far as automation and creating of virtual machine groups.

Offtopic?

[MarkByers]

Why is this modded off-topic? With the rise of 3D accelerated desktops: Mac's Quartz Extreme, Linux's XGL, and Microsoft's "insert name of the technology Vista will have") 3D support is more relevant than ever.

Re:Offtopic?

[LDoggg_]

Maybe it's offtopic because 3D support is something they are working on for the workstation product.
Today's announcment is for the release of the 1.0 version of the Server product.

The server product uses vnc or something like it to render the output to remote machines that use the vmware console.

I'm personally very happy about today's release. I've tested each beta release and have been quite impressed.

Re:Offtopic?

[CerebusUS]

Probably because this specific thread is about VMWare Server.

None of the servers in my data center can do 3d acceleration worth a damn, and that really hasn't bothered me a bit.

Re:Offtopic?

[Bert64]

I find it highly amusing that the "server" versions of windows all ship with a complete copy of directx (including direct3d, and support for various gaming-related networking protocols and joysticks etc)... And you can't remove it... WHY?
Maybe they're admitting what a mickey mouse excuse for a server their OS is, and that i should be playing games on it instead.

Re:Offtopic?

[drsmithy]

I find it highly amusing that the "server" versions of windows all ship with a complete copy of directx (including direct3d, and support for various gaming-related networking protocols and joysticks etc)... And you can't remove it... WHY?

Why not ?

Maybe they're admitting what a mickey mouse excuse for a server their OS is, and that i should be playing games on it instead.

Maybe they're doing it to annoy the anal-retentive types who get their knickers in a twist about such silly little irrelevancies...

Re:Offtopic?

[Tony Hoyle]

It's not a silly little irrelevance.

A server should *only* run what is required to run the apps on that server. Anything else is a security risk and a maintenence headache.

When an exploit is found in directx why should the servers need to be checked? And of course this being windows updating all this redundant crap requires a reboot - requiring scheduled downtime which means the server may be unupdated for several weeks (one place I worked at you had to get scheduled downtime cleared by the IT manager, who went to his weekly meetings with the board.. who often said no).

Re:Offtopic?

[popeyethesailor]

Actually no. Win2K3 does not have directx enabled by default - it does not even have graphic acceleration enabled. Check this site for how much work needs to be done to get 2K3 behaving like a workstation. They actually got a lot of things right with 2k3; sadly it was lost in the hype and flimflam of XP/Vista etc.

Re:Offtopic?

[drsmithy]

It's not a silly little irrelevance.

Yes, it is. Much like people who get all hot and bothered about how Windows has that login screen sitting there all the time.

A server should *only* run what is required to run the apps on that server. Anything else is a security risk and a maintenence headache.

Customising installs and making your server configurations all different from each other usually ends up being the larger maintenance headache.

I've worked in the kind of environment where the previous sysadmin got it into his head that every single server should be carefully customised to run only the absolute barest essentials to do its job. It was a nightmare of configuration inconsistencies and dependency hell.

When an exploit is found in directx why should the servers need to be checked?

They wouldn't. Firstly, DirectX isn't even enabled on Windows 2003 by default. Secondly, it would require an attacker to have a local logon (in which case your machine is as good as hosed anyway).

And of course this being windows updating all this redundant crap requires a reboot - requiring scheduled downtime which means the server may be unupdated for several weeks (one place I worked at you had to get scheduled downtime cleared by the IT manager, who went to his weekly meetings with the board.. who often said no).

Firstly, it would be extremely unlikely to require any reboot to patch a module not in use.

Secondly, if you cannot schedule a planned server reboot within 24 hours of knowing it's necessary, then your architecture (and/or procedure) is broken. Indeed, even if you can't handle an immediate, unscheduled reboot, your architecture is questionable.

Why it is being released for Free

[hackus]

In case you haven't been following Xen, the reason why you cannot run Windows is because we are waiting for intel's VM processor instructions to be implemented in the next VT release of thier processors.

Well, that appearently is no longer a problem and you should be able to use a standard Linux Fedora Core, or whatever installation to load windows on by next year.

VMware knows this, and is trying to prevent existing customers from leaving or looking elsewhere by giving away its products.

Interesting thoughts I have was:

1) I can install Windows workstations and servers remotely.
2) How long will it take for Microsoft to add a Service Pack update that detects windows running on a Linux box and have it start not working properly so that people use thier VM product instead, or don't have a choice.
3) Whats the performance going to be like.

VMWare is a nice product but A it is too expensive, and be it is too expensive because it turns any VM machine into a basket case performance wise.

So XeN's approach hopefully won't be any worse, maybe better since they are not trying to emulate an entire machine. :-)

-Hack

Re:Why it is being released for Free

[SirTalon42]

Xen has been able to run Windows for a while now (VT enabled procs are on the market). Both VMware Player and Server are free, only Workstation (like player + a few extra features) and ESX Server (like Server, but doesn't require a host OS, because it IS the host).

Re:Why it is being released for Free

[vrmlguy]

VMWare is a nice product but A it is too expensive, and be it is too expensive because it turns any VM machine into a basket case performance wise.

Except, (a) VMware's Server and Workstation products are free, and (b) VMware runs its guests as well as virtual infrastructure. Xen has its way of dealiing with performance issues, VMware has other ways, but nobody's going to use anything that won't run the guest OS resonably fast. And once Intel's VT release arrives, do you think that VMware isn't going to use the new instructions? Right now, VMware is the only virtualizer that runs both Windows and Linux guests, and it does a damn fine job of it.

Re:Why it is being released for Free

[nuzak]

> Well, that appearently is no longer a problem and you should be able to use a standard Linux Fedora Core, or whatever installation to load windows on by next year.

Dell 1950s and 2950s ship with VT-enabled Intel CPU's right now.

Xen is a nice hypervisor, but nothing else. They have nothing like VMotion, or even snapshots.

Re:Why it is being released for Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Xen 3.x has both live migration (equivalent to VMotion, but Xen is far faster) and xm save / xm resume seem to work just fine for snapshots. Please do your research before posting.

Re:Why it is being released for Free

[NormalVisual]

Xen is a nice hypervisor, but nothing else. They have nothing like VMotion, or even snapshots.

Are you sure about that?

xen rocks

[codepunk]

Xen also kicks vmwares arse up one side and down the other when it comes to speed.

Nice to play with, but way to slow.

[SIPVoIP]

I am working on a new VoIP startup and looking at virtualization. I looked at VMware, but the preformance sucked big time. Xen may not have the nice management interface (yet), but the approach gives far far better preformance. I just don't see why you would be willing to pay a 20 - 40% hit using VMware vs Xen.

-Nathan

Re:Nice to play with, but way to slow.

[pe1chl]

Then maybe you don't understand the difference between VMware and Xen?

For your work you should probably use Xen, others need VMware.

Re:Nice to play with, but way to slow.

[SIPVoIP]

I do actually, I guess what I don't understand is now that XEN is also supporting full virtualization why one would go with VMWare.

Evaluating Wikis using VMware virtual machines

[Cato]

Exactly - the TWiki project, which I'm involved in, has created a VM that enables a Windows user to download a complete, working TWiki system to evaluate for use as an enterprise Wiki for group collaboration. This radically simplifies installation for people who used to take many hours to install on Windows (primarily the issue was getting Cygwin, Apache, Perl and RCS installed properly) - the VM is actually a Debian GNU/Linux system but that's pretty much invisible to the person installing the VM. The result is that after a hefty download you can have a working Wiki within 5 to 10 minutes, most of which is waiting for Linux to boot in the VM.

See this page for more information and download links.

Software licences for each virtual machine

[MarkByers]

It allows me to purchase ... no new software

Strictly speaking, you need to purchase a new licence for each piece of software you use (including the operating system) on each virtual machine.

But other than that minor point, I agree with your post.

Re:Software licences for each virtual machine

[davidesh]

or just run trials (or OSS) of them... of which most software it is available. Including basically all MS software.

Re:Software licences for each virtual machine

[Blackforge]

Usually if you're a developer for Windows based software you have an MSDN license to go with it. This allows you to use the latest developer tools and unlimited amount of OS installations to work with (as long as their for development of course).

Re:Software licences for each virtual machine

[Anarke_Incarnate]

many pieces of software base their license on how many computers they are installed on, and don't consider "virtual" computers as part of the deal, or they have some other type of allowance such as installing it X times on the same hardware in dual boot or virtualization, etc.

Re:Software licences for each virtual machine

[BlueLightning]

I'm pretty sure Windows and Office don't fall into this category, though.

Re:Software licences for each virtual machine

[Decker-Mage]

To a limited extent M$ does. They revised the license terms for Windows Server 2003 Enterprise and Datacenter Release 2 editions. For those versions, you can have as many inactive virtual installations as you desire although for Enterprise you are limited to only having four installations active (running) at any one time. For Datacenter, as if we could afford the hardware/software combo {snort}, you can have as many active as you can run. The four simultaneously running installs for Enterprise is one reason I'm thinking of getting the new action pack once all the pieces are in place as I play with more than a few what/if scenarios here.

the Xen tradeoff is direct hooks to a kernel

[kenyee]

Not that it's a bad approach, but it's a tradeoff for the better speed. E.g., I can install vmware on any Linux distro. If I wanted to use Xen, I could run a distro w/ it installed or I could try patching my distro. Vmware runs on Linux and Windows and you can use its VM images on both platforms, as well as have high availability support if you want to upgrade to ESX Enterprise...Xen is still missing these features.

Personally, I'd love to hear more about bugs people found in the Linux version of VMWare since that's what I plan to be using until Xen 4.0 ;-)

Re:the Xen tradeoff is direct hooks to a kernel

[LinuxOnEveryDesktop]

If I wanted to use Xen, I could run a distro w/ it installed or I could try patching my distro.

Excuse me? Do your research, dude. I've just installed a new AMD64 box, and installed Xen on it. No 'patching' of the distro required; just run the Xen kernel and install a few utilities. Dead simple. Check this tutorial, for instance:

    The perfect Xen setup on Debian/Ubuntu

Re:the Xen tradeoff is direct hooks to a kernel

[hackus]

Good Points, and as people have pointed out you can get VT enabled processors and chipsets right now.

However, XeN has about a years worth of cooking I feel before I would want to use it for running anything other than another bunch of Linux servers.

No doubt, admin tools will be created to deal with the VT issues of running different OS's and tuning issues will be much understood, or fixed.

Right now, XeN is definately not ready for prime time to run a Windows OS in production.

Or at least, I wouldn't just yet.

-Hack

The BETA Had this restriction

[arcadum]

In no event shall Licensee use the Beta Software for Licensee's product development or any other commercial purpose.

Re:The BETA Had this restriction

[tweek]

I think this only applies to the Beta and is really just to cover thier asses. The betas actually expired after x number of months so you were forced to stay current if you...oh I don't know....platformed a new environment on vmware server and were waiting to turn it live when the real version came out?

Re:The BETA Had this restriction

[illumin8]

The link you published, http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/asedeno/vmware/ vmware-console-distrib/doc/EULA, seems to be a EULA for the VMware console distribution, not for VMware server.

Re:The BETA Had this restriction

[arcadum]

Thanks for looking out... It was the first link I cound find with the same EULA

Any surprised M$ VirtualPC 2004 now free?

[OpenSourceOfAllEvil]

MS announced it today. Must be pure coincidence.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default .mspx

I've heard it doesn't totally suck anymore.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=95

Re:Any surprised M$ VirtualPC 2004 now free?

[bheer]

Virtual PC is comparable to VMWare Workstation. VMWare Server (earlier called GSX?) is more analogous to Microsoft's Virtual Server, which is also free for Windows users.

Virtual appliances

[Kadin2048]

Actually if you go to the "Virtual Appliances" page, there are some pretty neat things you can do with VMWare.

Basically, they have virtual machine images that are set up in various configurations for particular purposes (e.g.: firewall, web server, SQL server, etc.) that you can download and run, so instead of actually setting up software packages and worrying about it being correctly configured and secure, you can just download the virtual machine of your choice, load it up, and go.

At least that's the theory -- I haven't played with them very much, admittedly. I was struck by how interesting a way it is to distribute software, though. Rather than delivering an executable file, you deliver an image of a whole machine, running that software, and then your host computer "executes" it by giving it access to some abstracted hardware resources, running it in a sandbox.

I'm not sure it's practical for everything, but I could definitely see the possibilites for distributing some pieces of software this way, if virtualization becomes a mainstream OS feature (or a popular free addition).

It reminds me a little of the way that software used to be distributed before computers had hard drives -- if you wanted to run sa program on your Apple IIc, you put the disk in the drive and rebooted the computer. Each "program" (what the user thought of as a program -- the disk they shoved in the drive) contained a minimal OS, just enough to go between the metal and the software. These virtual appliances are basically an update on the same idea; only except letting them run as the only program, directly on the metal, you run them in a virtual environment.

I could see some interesting "home network appliance" applications of virtualization. Imagine that you have a network appliance, which consists of a reasonably fast PC in an expandable chassis (one with some empty hot-swap bays). It has a very minimal host OS, running off of some read-only media. Whatever functions you want the appliance to perform are all handed by adding drives to it which contain a VM image. Want a firewall? Get the 'firewall component', which could be some form of removable storage that has a Smoothwall VM image, and stick it into the appliance. The host starts running it, and you're away. Same if you wanted to add a web server component, file server component, etc. The various components could run on whatever guest OS they were most suited to, all transparent to the user. It might require more computer power than is currently practical to put into an appliance cheaply, but it could be neat.

Oh Damn

[blackirish]

Goddamnit, I just finished testing and upgraded my servers to Beta 3 yesterday.

I have to say though, as the IT manager in a medium sized business with a limited (whose isn't?) IT budget, VMware has made my life MUCH easier.

I can buy capable dual-core servers for $500, use VMware to host several platforms on each and have budget leftover for spare hardware. I can offer more services to users, because I don't need to purchase additional hardware or request a budget increase. Security is improved, because VMware lets me separate services which should not be running on the same platform. And reliability is improved and downtime is reduced. If hardware fails, I can restore the virtual machines from backups onto spare hardware already running VMware. With the static nature of most of my servers, logs and databases are on an NFS, I can usually restore full functionality within an hour.

And you know what the best part is? I don't have to sweet talk the CFO for more money when budget time comes around again. And strangely enough, the higher ups see the better bang for the buck and my budget is increasing.

Re:Oh Damn

[tweek]

I feel you on all those points. I would also profer that if you need to eek out the extra performance 5k per CPU is not a bad deal for Infrastructure 3. If you can work with a reseller, you might be able to get lower.

The only downside I see to ESX 3 is they STILL won't support SATA.

Re:Oh Damn

[jbplou]

I can buy capable dual-core servers for $500 Capable of what? Capable of not running raid or having memory installed.

Re:Oh Damn

[IANAAC]

I can buy capable dual-core servers for $500

That's not a server. That's a desktop system. Contrary to what Dell want you to think with their entry-level servers, servers really do need redundancy, not to mention more than 512M of RAM.

So this does what now?

[RalphSleigh]

So I downloaded this VMware server, filled in a bunch of bogus info to get a serial number and now have ubuntu installing in a window on my desktop...

Should I have used the workstation version? And why does it think not having VMWare tools installed is a bad thing? Looking around their site I can't find alot of basic infomation for the lost /.er who is just playing around to gain some geek points.

Re:So this does what now?

[tweek]

Well VMware server is not really for your desktop. It's really designed to be headless. If you want a desktop, you should really go to VMware Workstation. Now you CAN use server to install and create a virtual machine and then load that up in player but it seems like alot of trouble to go through to get a VM.

The VMware tools ARE very helpful. It offers an accelerated network driver an accelerated video driver and also provides an interface for the Guest operating system from the host operating system side.

Re:So this does what now?

[cecil_turtle]

Not that I'm an expert but I might be able to help a little bit - I have VMware server running on ubuntu Dapper running a number of VM's, mostly for fun, but one is a Windows XP installation just to run Quicken. The VMware Tools is something that you install onto the guest OS that basically gives you better performance (display and mouse I believe). If you notice a sluggish mouse this helps tremendously, makes it seem almost native. Also if you have a VM where you have to press ctrl+alt to get back out to your host OS, installing the VMware Tools will make it so the mouse can seamlessly go between both (like if you're not in full screen mode). The Server version is free where the Workstation version is not. The Workstation version has some additional functionality with saving snapshots and whatnot, it's better for a development environment for doing lots of testing. The server version you can run on one machine and connect to it from another machine (that dialog that pops up every time you start asking if you want to connect to local host or a remote computer). The Player is a simple version that just plays already built VM's, you can't create new ones or modify the properties of them (RAM, devices, etc.). Hope that helps.

Re:So this does what now?

[ncalsmitty1369]

The server version is free, workstation is not.

VMtools will give your guest os some extra functionality, eg. time sync with host, better guest interaction with the host desktop, etc. It is nice to have if you are going to be using x in your guest os.

Re:So this does what now?

[RalphSleigh]

Ok, but if I cant download the workstation one free thats no good 8-p.

So its installed, and activating the install VMTools menu option has only made a virtual DVD appear. But look on the bight side, the internets work, which is more than can be said for native duel-booted ubuntu (usb wireless with WPA). Time to figure out how these non one click install processes work.

Re:So this does what now?

[The Cisco Kid]

You dont need to run your VM's in 'player' - there is no reason you can't run VMWare server on your workstation, use the client to connect and install on OS, and then you have the option of leaving it headless (you can still ssh in, and do remote X stuff), or of firing the client up and getting console.

Also, everyone seems to think the only reason to run it might be to run Windows as a client on a linux host or (blech) Linux as a client on a Windows host, but theres nothing requiring that. - say you were running RedHat, and wanted to test something you were developing in many different distributions of Linux, say Ubuntu, Debian, Slack, etc. Instead of partitioning and/or booting back and forth, you could have them all up at once.

Also (although you'd probably have to go for the pay-for-version) if you were an ISP/hosting company, and wanted to offer 'dedicated server', you could offer 'Virtual server' where each client has a full 'server' of their own, root access and all, but each client is fully isolated from the others, if each ones needs are light on CPU/ram, instead of having to buy and build a big pile of cheap servers, you'd just need a couple machines, with more ram and diskspace.

Re:So this does what now?

[petermgreen]

with older versions of linux distros and all versions of windows installing vmware tools is pretty much essential to get the graphics driver (with modern distros this isn't an issue as vmware put the driver under an appropriate license for inclusion in Xfree86).

other than that the clock sync is handy especially if you use the suspend feature (which has the side effect of freezing the guests clock for the duration of the suspend leaving it way out of whack when you resume) and so is the ability to move your mouse over the edge of a VM window to get in and out.

VMplayer doesn't expire

[The MAZZTer]

If you read the fine print, you'll realize VMware server free keys expire...

WINE?

[The MAZZTer]

Your Window apps won't work under WINE? You should at least try if you haven't, it'll be easier than using them through a VM if it works.

Windows as guest?

[spectro]

Can I run windows as guest in this thing?, can't find any info in vmware's site but I understand you need Workstation to host Windows' VMs

Re:Windows as guest?

[jjohnson]

You can host Windows in it. There's never been any restriction in VMWare on running Windows in particular versions.

A few observations

[PingXao]

First if you install Windows into a VM from a legit Windows XP CD and try to download any updates the Genuine Windows Advantage test fails. So MS already knows if you're running VMware. I think MS wants you to buy multiple copies of Windows if you're planning to run in a VM as well as on the real silicon.

Second, this is a licensing issue too, one thing I've used it for is for software I use too infrequently to purchase and has a trial period like 30 days or whatever. Create a VM, install XP in to it, and take a snapshot. Then install and run the software. You may, as I often do, only need to run it for a couple of hours and then not again for a couple of months. By then the trial period has expired. Simply restore the VM from the snapshot, re-install the trial software and you're good to go for another session. Unethical? Maybe. Flame away.

Lastly, despite the fact that I occasionally do #2, I mostly use VMware to run Fedora Core for development. I have Apache set up on it with all the bells and whistles and when I'm working on a website I use it as a test server. Runs quite well with 256 MB dedicated to it on my 1 GB main XP system.

Re:A few observations

[yeremein]

First if you install Windows into a VM from a legit Windows XP CD and try to download any updates the Genuine Windows Advantage test fails. So MS already knows if you're running VMware.

I had no trouble passing the XP "Genuine Advantage" test in a VM (it was under VMware RC3, though, but I doubt that'd make a difference). (I had to submit to the MS spyware so I could play with Microsoft's new rootkit, but I didn't want to infect my real machine with either...)

I think MS wants you to buy multiple copies of Windows if you're planning to run in a VM as well as on the real silicon.

Yeah, that could be why you had trouble validating...

Re:A few observations

[SorryTomato]

Second, this is a licensing issue too, one thing I've used it for is for software I use too infrequently to purchase and has a trial period like 30 days or whatever. Create a VM, install XP in to it, and take a snapshot. Then install and run the software. You may, as I often do, only need to run it for a couple of hours and then not again for a couple of months. By then the trial period has expired. Simply restore the VM from the snapshot, re-install the trial software and you're good to go for another session.

You'd be better off using a software virtualizer for all your virtual pirating needs.

[1] its hell of a lot simpler than mucking with VMs
[2] the apps you use are faster, since it is not running in a VM
[3] Option of sand-boxing/unboxing the apps to suit the app and your needs
[4] Apps can be completely removed and restored instantaneously with single button click
[5] No need to reinstall to reinitialize, system restored to a selected "fresh install" state in a single button click

Altiris SVS is free for private use (or was, check the latest licencing)... http://www.altiris.com/Products/SoftwareVirtualiza tionSolution.aspx It does have its limitations, but is useful for the vast majority of the stuff.

Linux/UNIX virtualization

[brennz]

Linux & UNIX based virtualization has always been far superior to that of Windows. Superior is probably an understatement though, more like exponentially better.

Just check into

OpenVZ http://openvz.org/
FreeBSD Jails http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_Jail
Solaris zones http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zones/faq/
Xen http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/

and the list goes on. So much better on *nix. Of course, I think that is somehow related to the fact you can run a *nix box via CLI, bare minimum of functionality, the likes of which it even the best Windows gurus cannot get close to (though Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell do rox)

What is funny, is so many of us are ignorant of virtualization's roots in IBM mainframes. Big Blue was so far ahead of the times, it is like omg. BTW, I love Wikipedia. I've been preparing a presentation on virtualization the last few days, and Wikipedia makes it so easy!

Re:Linux/UNIX virtualization

[Decker-Mage]

Thankfully I never was since I was introduced to computing, by IBM System Engineers and Administrators, at the tender age of ten back in the punch-card days. Virtualization is far from the only concept to migrate from IBM mainframes (I/O processors, coprocessors, ... anyone?). Makes me glad that I spent so much time with them, reading all the manuals religiously, and that they were willing to explain it to some kid given free run of the computing center.

Of course, times have changed and more than a little bit. Now it's hundreds to thousands of guest machines but fortunately most of the tools have scaled up as well, err... almost as well. Oh heck, the tools need more than a little work to catch up. We'll get there on the SysAdmin side (or all commit seppuku).

Re:Linux/UNIX virtualization

[jschrod]

First, I would count VMware under Linux virtualization, too. After all, Linux is its primary platform and ESX is Linux.

That said, your list of open source virtualization products have one missing feature that I don't want to miss any more: snapshots, the ability to go back in time to a previous state that is known to be stable. (Or an erroneous state; it's also great to be able to try out different remedies for a problem that one has and where the repair must be thoroughly tested before it's rolled out on 1000s of systems.)

Yes, some SAN products give me snapshots as well. But many environments where we work don't have the money for an EMC box, whereas they can afford VMware.

Re:How interesting...

[w3bgeek]

Apples and oranges - here's a breakdown of what the comparable products are: Virtual PC Express (replaced by Virtual PC as of yesterday) ~= VMWare Player Virtual PC ~= VMWare Workstation Virtual Server ~= VMWare Server/VMWare GSX There isn't really a comperable Microsoft product to VMWare ESX, though Virtual Server does have a similar feature set (just done in a much different way. The real MS competitor to ESX is Windows Virtualization, which will release shortly after Longhorn, which is built using a hardware hypervisor. There was a time when the performance difference between VMWare and their MS comp products was enough to justify the additional cost, but the gap has closed considerably. At this point, properly configured systems running each are going to perform essentially the same (there are things each do better than the other).

Almost Slashdotted

[Marcos Eliziario]

6.1 KB/Sec only :-(. Anyway, brave servers, slow but still serving the file.... let's see how much time they can stand the horde of /.ers.

We moved all our servers to VM ware

[Hyperx_Man]

We consolidated 180 physical servers onto 10 physical servers, each running 10-20 VM sessions of Windows 2000 and 2003 server (Linux being the host OS). Amazing performance, and its really easy to restore things. No more outages, down times, etc. It's also easy to put up a new server, should we need to. No more requests for hardware allowances - and since we have extra Windows Server licenses, we just do it. Productivity is through the roof. Using V-motion, we can move sessions between servers - something that takes no time and no down time.

Re:We moved all our servers to VM ware

[svallarian]

What size of hardware are you running for those VM boxes?

Re:We moved all our servers to VM ware

[Hyperx_Man]

I was not involved in the purchasing of hardware, but they are HP boxes, and each one cost close to $20k. Less than 1 year old. Dual processors ( I think a few were quads, but not sure). They actually replaced Compaq servers that cost about that much 5 years ago. I will try to get the exact specs tomorrow.

Re:We moved all our servers to VM ware

[svallarian]

Thanks...We're fixing to start doing a similar thing, running a couple of large IBM x335 systems running 10 VMs or so to host terminal server applications.

Funny that...a virtual machine hosting a semi-virtual session.

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but

[mclaincausey]

My serial didn't work. So I provided a bunch of information to them for nothing. Great.

workstation vs. server

[mixmasta]

I've used the vmware workstation product for years, but never understood what the server product did better ...

Can anyone illuminate that area for me?

-Mike

Re:workstation vs. server

[rachit]

Primary visible difference:

You can run VMware Server VMs headless and can connect to the console remotely.

Workstation, you cannot.

Re:workstation vs. server

[Tony Hoyle]

This also means you can have a server running and shut down the GUI - even log out - and it'll keep running.

My Windows Media Centre install is such a beast...

Re:workstation vs. server

[tehcyder]

I think a server is a big box with flashing red lights, and a workstation is like a TV screen with a typewriter attached to it. Or something.

Randall

[Weaselmancer]

"You'll be missed."

Here's how I use it

[Weaselmancer]

At work I use the player version to install temp software. For example, on a daily basis I have to use Microsoft Windows Platform Builder 5.0. We recently got the CE6 beta. For a project, I'm supposed to learn about it and use it to make a few demo images.

So rather than risking having the CE6 beta pooch my whole install, I just make a 20GB disk image using qemu, edit a vmx file and make a system. Load XP SP2 on that, Visual Studio and the beta and I'm ready to rock. Runs like a champ.

Another thing I do is have a VMware virtual machine on my external 40GB USB2 hard drive. It's a Mandriva Linux 10 image, and I use that for personal programming during down time at work. Or if I want to read web pages and dodge the spyware. I have another image that I'm using to design simple circuit boards using the freeware Eagle software. I can start an autoroute job, then simply move the whole machine out of my way and keep working. This is extra great at home, since I'm on a Athlon X2 dual core 4400. The virtual machine runs at full tilt on one processor, and I can play Mechwarrior 4 on the other one. With no lag or skipping. It's a blast.

At home, another good use is their browser appliance. It's a virtual machine running Linux that dodges practically all spyware. I'm going to hook my wife up with it sometime here soon. She likes to visit song lyric sites and they keep loading crap on her Windows install.

Reason for DirectX on servers

[marciot]

I find it highly amusing that the "server" versions of windows all ship with a complete copy of directx (including direct3d, and support for various gaming-related networking protocols and joysticks etc)...

If you watch the movie Hackers, you will find out that real servers are accessed by virtual reality interfaces where you get to fly over a landscape of translucent towers with glowing green lettering on them, while pounding on neon acrylic keyboards.

For this sort of futuristic server interface, you definitely need DirectX. Microsoft is just being forward thinking by including DirectX in their current server products, in anticipation of their Vista Server product, which will make full use of it.

Video Editing

[linuxpyro]

I've actually used VMware for doing some video work with Adobe Premiere and After Effects on my Linux machine.

It's not something I'd recommend doing all the time, but it works decently.

Console on Mac yet?

[dschuetz]

They still don't have (that I've seen) a VMWare Console for the Mac. A while back I tried remotely launching the X-windows VMWare console to a mac, but there was some kind of display issue and it wouldn't work (I don't recall the specific errors, but I think it might have even been a simple endian problem. As I always thought X is X, this never made much sense to me, either.)

Anyway, that'd be the one thing keeping me from using this at home for a simple W95 sandbox that I could use for those really few sites that simply refuse to support anything beyond IE (XM's account management, for one, and the DelTek timesheet system used by my wife's employer, for another). We have Mac desktops, and Linux servers, but no windows boxes anywhere in the house.

VMWare Server vs Virtual PC Server

[cuban321]

I've been comparing the two products over the past two days. I've hardly scratched the surface, but one thing that did bug me is the lack of NTLM authentication in the VMWare product. It supports logging in via the admin website/app using your domain account, but does not support single sign-on (SSO). I love SSO, and I wish all apps supported it.

Copy protected CDs

[shish]

My only reason for using windows is games, and old-ish games at that, so performance isn't a worry -- a question though; is there anything (vmware or other) that will allow the inner OS raw access to the CD drive, so that ugly hardware hack copy protection schemes work?