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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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
"Searching for pr0n and warez in a virtual machine and whack it when I'm done."
Thanks for sharing that.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
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.
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.
> 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.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.