VMware "Miles Ahead" of Microsoft Virtual Server

sunshineluv7 writes, "IT managers gathered in New York City earlier this week to get advice from experts on when, why, and how to virtualize their server environments. The takeaway from the conference: if you want to run an enterprise-class virtualization platform in production today, stick with VMware." Other wise words from this conference: "Virtualization is a journey, not a project."

Comments

Binary Translation

[DrDitto]

VMWare does on-the-demand binary translation (BT) to avoid traps. I could be wrong, but I don't think Microsoft Virtual Server does BT.

Re:Binary Translation

[angryargus]

Virtual Server does BT (it has to in order to work on non-VT processors), but Xen doesn't do BT (which is why Xen needs paravirtualiztion support in Linux, and VT processors for Windows).

It's TBD on whether "Windows Server Virtualization" will use BT, but I suspect they'll drop it. With Intel processors it's not possible to do BT when using VT on x64 processors in 64-bit mode (however it is possible on AMD processors).

Re:Binary Translation

[Rezonant]

What kind of useless speculation is that?

It does JIT (or BT as you call it). Otherwise it would be unbearably slow. It might not do it as efficiently as VMware though.

Re:Binary Translation

[DrDitto]

Right, I was confused to because certain instructions are used for both user-mode and privilege mode and they do different things. Someone told me that the Microsoft Virtual Server "emulates" these instructions instead of "translating" them. Yes, useless speculation.

Re:Binary Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. VMware can crash both in VM and on the real box just as well as any application.

Re:Binary Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, sir. Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P., shouldn't we keep the P.C. on the Q.T.? 'Cause if it leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A., and then we'd all be put out in K.P.

Re:Binary Translation

[Wesley Felter]

With hardware assist (VT or AMD-V), trap-and-emulate virtualization is slower than using binary translation, but not unbearably slow. There was a paper recently from VMware about this topic.

VMware

[dlichterman]

Its also awesome that VMWare Server is available free to download. I installed it on my laptop running Ubuntu and can run Windows XP.

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

Re:VMware

[Acer500]

Microsoft's Virtual Server is also available for free:

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

Won't run on Ubuntu obviously :P

Re:VMware

[Instine]

I'm not sure which builds exactly, but I know I tried three times, and failed three times to put Vista (Beta2 and RC1) on VPC and failed three times. Worked for each buold first time on VMWare. I mean come on M$! Its hard not to flamebait, when they're just failing so badly. What do they think all the developers of the world are going to do with their pre-public releases?

Re:VMware

[hacker]

And you probably got the poor performance too. Why not stick with VMware Workstation, its much, MUCH faster (especially on single-proc machines) and supports a lot more than Server does (currently).

Re:VMware

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm, install it directly on our PC? It's not like we're not used to reinstall MS OSes anyway....

Seriously (yes, the previous line was a joke), vmware is not the ideal environment to test out the latest GUI wonders of MS-Windows Vista. I understand that there are plenty other less obvious new features, but these are _less obvious_.

Re:VMware

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the "free" bit?

Re:VMware

[MyDixieWrecked]

I had no problem getting Vista installed in VPC, albeit, it took like 4 hours (dual 2.7ghz G5 w/ 2GB RAM). It also ran so slow, it was barely usable, and I couldn't get sound or networking working.

Re:VMware

[prisoner-of-enigma]

I'm not sure which builds exactly, but I know I tried three times, and failed three times to put Vista (Beta2 and RC1) on VPC and failed three times.

I'm not sure what you were doing wrong, then. I've installed every build since 5368 on MS Virtual Server 2005 R2 (Release, and with the SP Beta) and they all work. What they don't all support are the VM Extensions required to get any kind of decent performance out of it. Vista betas and the RC1 were slow enough as is; without the Extensions, it was pretty much a slideshow. There is a beta VM Extension available from Microsoft Connect which is free for all to download if you want. Those extensions worked for most pre-RC1 builds, but I don't think they've been updated for the actual RC1 yet.

Re:VMware

[ModemRat]

What do they think all the developers of the world are going to do with their pre-public releases?

If you are like a co-worker of mine, shout "oooOOO Vista is out!" and wipe your HD and install the beta on your primary computer.

Re:VMware

[smilerz]

Actually, it will run - MS just won't support it. They do support several flavors of linux, mostly RedHat I think.

Re:VMware

[Anonymous Coward]

albeit, it took like 4 hours (dual 2.7ghz G5 w/ 2GB RAM). It also ran so slow, it was barely usable, and I couldn't get sound or networking working.

So emulation worked perfectly!

Re:VMware

[khelms]

Um, no. Virtual PC will run Linux, but will not run ON Linux.

Re:VMware

[ewl1217]

WMware Server is free (as in beer, not freedom). VMware Workstation is not. That's why.

Re:VMware

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

But does it run on Linux?

Re:VMware

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I just like saying "Ubuntu".

There, I did it: "Ubuntu. Ubuntu, Ubuntu!"

Re:VMware

[StikyPad]

I know I tried three times, and failed three times to put Vista (Beta2 and RC1) on VPC and failed three times.

Well look on the bright side: You only tried three times, but you failed six times! That's a 100% net gain in results over effort. If we can find a way to harness your failure, we might be able to use you to power our cities.

Re:VMware

[Afrosheen]

Yeah, I tried MS Virtual Server once...it was a worthless piece of crap with lots of services and pieces strewn about like a really, really bad project. It doesn't run in a nice container like VMWare does, it can't replace the host OS with its own optimized OS and run virtual machines beneath it (like VMWare ESX does), and it's a bitch to understand, install, configure, and put to work.

  I'd call it alpha at best, but that's an insult to alpha projects that are twice as polished and usable as MSVS.

  Give it four or five years and it may approach VMWare, but by then VMWare will be so much more advanced..sheesh I can't even begin to understand why Microsoft even tried on this one.

Re:VMware

[Techman83]

Same, Ubuntu 6.06 with XP running in a VMware session. I can do all my user support and development, patch testing and at the end of the day, roll it back to the nice clean base snapshot!

My windows desktop that sits in the corner on the other hand is about as usefull as an ashtray on a motorcycle.

Re:VMware

[1310nm]

LOL, b4it3d.

Re:VMware

[Courageous]

The headliner for this article is terrible grandstanding.

I was personally present at this conference and literally filled up an entire notebook front-to-back with notes.

The headliner makes it sound as if the vmware/virtual server take home points were somehow a major item of the show. No. It was so not important that it must have come up while I was on a piss break. It's not in my notes, and I heard no such remark.

I would think that the most interesting finding of the conference was the very large scale deployments virtualization (in all its forms, compute, storage, network, application, and a few odds and ends) in major organizations today.

And the reported survey findings were quite interesting. For example, virtualization is being used primarily for disaster recovery and the ease with which machines are provisioned... these ahead of consolodation.

Availability and reduced administration costs are also cited as top factors.

Now if you wanted it from the flip side, I'll tell you that VMWare has told me frankly that their most feared competitor is not Xen. It's Microsoft. They view Microsoft as their most probable rigorous competitor in the data center space (and this is the space they are targeted at, have no doubt about it).

Microsoft will have virtually everything VI3 has today in about 14-18 months. This will be "included" in their OS, as part of the Longhorn deployment. Considering the rather bracing cost of $2500 per CPU for VI3, VMWare should definitely be counting their blessings while they last.

Don't get me wrong. I happen to agree with the assessment that VMWare is 1) the best game in town, and 2) current worth every penny in ROI.

Virtualization is really an OS function, though. As Suse, Microsoft, and Redhat all well know.

BTW, Suse 10 includes Xen, has a vmotion like technology, and a failover capability as part of the standard Suse Cluster code.

C//

Re:VMware

[KlomDark]

Maybe try harder. Took me minutes to get it working, a couple hours to understand how to tweak it, and now have multiple copies of Win2K3 server and Ubuntu running on the same machine. Hardest part was figuring out how to get Ubuntu to stop trying for 24-bit color depth, as Virtual Server only supports 16.

Ubuntu is great once you get it installed, but you gotta admit that it's install really sucks as far as configurability goes. Like why can I not directly install to the hard drive from the Ubuntu Live CD? Instead you're stuck with this slow load of the Live CD, just to click an icon that says 'Install' once it's finally up. And that installer locks up half the time. Picky thing having to set IDE=NODMA to install.

Re:VMware

[Afrosheen]

Yeah, I would have tried harder if I needed it, but we have a stout ESX server up here that does the heavy lifting. I just gave it a test drive, and based on my initial impressions, it was an old horse in need of a shotgun-wielding farmer.

Re:VMware

[alx.slashdot]

As the guy sayd, he tried VPC, not Virtual Server. According to this, there might be slight difference between the two: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtu alserver/techinfo/vsvsvpc.mspx

Re:VMware

[Instine]

lol. Yes... Dyslexic moment. My apologies.

Still, I didn't succeed. Which is/was the point.
and yes, I used VPC not server.

Still to get sound playing on any virtual set up though. Any hints anyone? Other than be less lame...

In all objectivity...

[sdirrim]

Although VMware appears to be better for now, will it have the same level of support and compatibility that Microsoft provides? And will it be able to continue inproving, or will MS overtake it in the near future? This is not a criticism of VMwaer, it is something to consider before completely favoring VMware.

Re:In all objectivity...

[nolife]

So how long do you wait? I've used VMWare ESX server in production for years and more recently the scaled down VMServer and MS virtual server. ESX is quantum leaps above the current MS offerings, they are not even playing on the same field. In fact, even the free VMServer product from VM is far better then the MS virtual server product IMHO.
I have no doubt MS will improve the product and add functionality as time goes on but they are currently WAY behind and not making great strides at this time.

You can wait but you will be waiting a looong time, at least years. Keep in mind, VMWare products are improving as well.

Re:In all objectivity...

[TheLinuxSRC]

Although VMware appears to be better for now, will it have the same level of support and compatibility that Microsoft provides?

If you are referring to compatibility amongst MS products I suspect the answer would be yes, it will probably work great for running MS products on top of MS products. However, keeping in mind MS' contempt for their customers coupled with the fact that MS has a very very difficult time "playing fair" with any competitors, I would assume that anything other than a MS product that you try to run will fail. It will not fail miserably or refuse to install, it will just be "buggy" and MS will point the finger squarely at whatever "unsupported" OS it is that you are using. Now as far as compatibilty goes, could you elaborate what you mean there? MS is famous for not being compatible with anything (including older MS software itself). You will also want to keep in mind that VMWare has been doing this for a long time. This is Internet2 for MS -- they missed the boat big-time and are now trying to catch up.

Re:In all objectivity...

[saridder]

I was at this forum, and MS said that it will operate other OS'. They're also going to include the Hypervisor free in all copies of Longhorn. This certainly is better than Novell's first crack at it - their Linux version could only run thier OS.

Re:In all objectivity...

[haruchai]

Wow, you must be the poster child for the effects of Microsoft marketing spin. It's sad that this is what we've come to. VMware is not the only product that does what it does but it does it very well.
And, it's their main product, their bread-and-butter.
That's not the case with Virtual Server so there is no guarantee that Microsoft will continue to support it - and, with the release of Vista on the horizon, they have a lot bigger fish to fry in the short term.

As to whether, or not, Virtual Server will overtake it, who can say? It will probably take a few years and VMware won't stand still

Re:In all objectivity...

[sdirrim]

In response to the personal jab: I brought up a possibly overlooked aspect of the software. I didn't say that it made MS or VMware better than the other. I just posed it for people to consider. In other words, I am MS's "poster child" because I actually THINK about things instead of blindly touting one side or the other. From the post: "This is not a criticism of VMware". I post food for thought, and because I am not a fanboy, I am labeled as an overrated flamer who is the "poster child for the effects of Microsoft marketing spin". Remember, I did NOT say that VMware was bad, or even that MS was better than VMware. It was just a simple possibility to consider. Now, for speaking my mind, I will be flamed out of existence. Thank you.

Re:In all objectivity...

[Feyr]

vmware might very well be better, but ms allows you to run 4 virtual servers with 1 license of MS windows server 2003 R2. i doubt they allow it if you use vmware

feel free to correct me with a link if im wrong

Re:In all objectivity...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, for speaking my mind, I will be flamed out of existence. Thank you.

You're very welcome. :-D

Re:In all objectivity...

[BagOBones]

The licence just states that if you are running 2003 R2 as the host OS you can run 4 instances of it as VMs on the same server. It doesn't dictate that you must use the MS virtual server product but it does limit you inthe fact you could not do the same with the FULL ESX product from VMware since it becomes the host. You could however use the free VMware server hosted on a 2003 R2 system, as the licence is worded right now anyway.

Re:In all objectivity...

[Rob Riggs]

I'm no fan of Novell, but their "first crack at it" was a technology preview of Xen, which by its own admission only supported OSes that have been ported to the Xen hypervisor. It's not like the Xen folks could get the Windows XP source and release a version ported to Xen, now, could they? They were not claiming it would work with other OSes without VT.

Your comment about that seems like an attempt to deflect attention away from the GP's implied point, which was... the knowledge, borne out of years of experience, of just about everyone I know in this industry that must administer a heterogeneous computing environment, that MS does not play nice with others. Every admin, when they consider using MS products in such an environment, has to ask himself, "How will Microsoft fsck me over with this decision?"

I'm doing that now, even as I advocate moving our NIS maps into Active Directory, converting from NIS to LDAP and doing SSO with Kerberos using AD as the KDC.

Re:In all objectivity...

[ShakaZ]

I'm no fan of Novell, but their "first crack at it" was a technology preview of Xen, which by its own admission only supported OSes that have been ported to the Xen hypervisor. It's not like the Xen folks could get the Windows XP source and release a version ported to Xen, now, could they? They were not claiming it would work with other OSes without VT.

In fact when Xen was first released the author said it ran Windows XP if a (or some) files were replaced... he didn't release the modified files only to avoid lawsuits from M$. Second fact the latest cpu's from intel & amd support virtualization so that Xen could be able to run Windows or any other unmodified OS....

Re:In all objectivity...

[walt-sjc]

Although VMware appears to be better for now, will it have the same level of support and compatibility that Microsoft provides?

God I hope not. If VMWare gave end-users (that paid for the software) the level of support that MS gives end-users (that paid for the software,) I wouldn't even be able to open a ticket without forking over additional large $$$. Nope, I hope VMWare keeps up with the high quality of support it gives paying users and doesn't stoop to the non-support level MS has.

Re:In all objectivity...

[OnlineAlias]

The virtual copies are tied to the OS, not the VM software. So yes, you can run 4 copies legally on VM.

Re:In all objectivity...

[Anonymous Coward]

God I hope not. If VMWare gave end-users (that paid for the software) the level of support that MS gives end-users (that paid for the software,) I wouldn't even be able to open a ticket without forking over additional large $$$. Nope, I hope VMWare keeps up with the high quality of support it gives paying users and doesn't stoop to the non-support level MS has.

I wish VMware would provide ANY support for their Workstation product. I started using VMware Workstation with version 4. Didn't have a single problem for a year and a half. Then all of a sudden, it starts locking up. Not just a guest OS lockup. The host system locks up. The host (running RHEL 3) completly disapperas from the network. Nothing written to log files, no kernel panic, not a dam thing. Funny thing, it ONLY happens when running VMware. No other application.

So I put in a support call. What's the response? "Uh, we haven't seen that before. Sorry, don't know what to do. Try reinstalling your host OS. If that doesn't work, try UPGRADING to VMware Workstation 5. Do you want me to close your support ticket or leave it open?" I couldn't make this shit up. This by the way is the response for a user (me) that has PAID for gold support from VMware. I talked to a friend of mine who is experiencing the EXACT same thing, and has gotten the same response from support. I've searched the knowledge base, vmware forums, etc., all with no answer.

I guess sticking you head in the sand and ignoring the problem is the VMware support way to go.

Re:In all objectivity...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I brought up a possibly overlooked aspect of the software. I didn't say that it made MS or VMware better than the other."

Your first post read like a MS fanboy reaching for straws as if someone called your baby ugly. Sorry, that's how it read.

Re:In all objectivity...

[Aqualung812]

That's not the case with Virtual Server so there is no guarantee that Microsoft will continue to support it - and, with the release of Vista on the horizon, they have a lot bigger fish to fry in the short term.

Actually, that wouldn't be the Vista team working on that. They have already said they are putting it into Longhorn.

If they do that, MS will be the leader in virtualization. It will be there, why not use it? Kind of like msn.com as a homepage.

Re:In all objectivity...

[Anonymous Coward]

>I post food for thought

I guess people think you post thought for food. :-)

VMWare is no good

[Van Cutter Romney]

I recently tried the free version of VMWare on Windows XP. Their documentation is horrible and it definitely looks like they want people to buy it than use the free version. I tried loading all version of Linux from Red Hat Linux to Ubuntu all of which failed at some point. Frustrated, I've given up...

Re:VMWare is no good

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you just a moron? Its run everything I've thrown at it with out any problems. What kind of issues did you run into?

Re:VMWare is no good

[LaughingCoder]

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

Re:VMWare is no good

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... I've had the exact oposite experience. I've been using Server, Workstation, and more recently infrastructure and haven't had any trouble virtualizing multiple distros of linux, win xp, and win 2003 server on several different hardware platforms. For me at least, it just works.

Re:VMWare is no good

[COMON$]

Ive run VMWare on multiple platforms and have never had a single issue.. Ok one or two but they were my own fault. Support forums out there are nice and I havent ever had to explain to someone how to set it up beyond the initial "Go to this URL". If you have given up on understanding VMWare I would suggest staying away from other technologies such as OpenOffice, any version of Linux, and for that matter I would just box up your PC and ship it back. Make sure you dont use any sharp objects either....

Ya I know I went overboard :)

Re:VMWare is no good

[burnt_cajun_toast]

I've used VMWare and found that you might need to change some of the install options for Redhat (or Suse for that matter) to get them to install in VMWare. A few were ACPI=off, IDE=nodma and sometimes it was just a video option and the installs worked just fine.

Re:VMWare is no good

[lubricated]

haha, I think they are talking about servers here. So if some dumbass can't figure it out, they probably don't care.

Re:VMWare is no good

[monkeybrainsoup]

I recently tried using MS Virtual Server to create VMs for Fedora Core and CentOS. For all of these it seemed like I got throught the install process but upon "rebooting" I got death. For the free VMWare, Fedora Core worked like a charm the first time. I'll probably end up using MS for MS guests and VMWare for everything else.

Re:VMWare is no good

[Tekfactory]

Could you define Death?

Was the screen resolutions shot, and colors wacked out?

There is a known problem with MS Virtual PC (I know you said server) in Millions of Colors mode because they don't do 24 bit graphics at all, however if you setup the box in 16 bit mode or Thousands of Colors the box should be fine.

I mention it here in my FC5 install guide Step 26
http://www.plainenglishsecurity.com/Fedora5.html

I've tried FC6 RC3 but it dies very early on in the graphical install, probably due to the same issue, I haven't found a boot option for color depth just resolution so I'm waiting for FC6 Final to try again.

Similarly in VMServer (the free one) I couldn't get FC5 to work after the partition gets written, no problem doing the same install on VMWare Workstation though.

Re:VMWare is no good

[rec9140]

To handle distro of the week or day or hour I use the VMPlayer and the Live CD Virtual Machine. DL ISO, create a directory for it, dump ISO in directory, rename to livecd.iso, boot up VMP. Can't beat it.

I've got several distros installed to virtual HD's that I can boot up and try things on. fubar'd the install up, no probelm resotre the back up of the virtual HD, back to where I left off. I am not touching msleases product, I don't want it even if its free.

I spend 99% of my day in Linux doing day to day business. Thanks to VMWare and I am now ready to Penquinista things! Solve a few hardware issues on some PC's related to Highpoint onboard IDE RAID and Soyo Ultra Dragon Motherboards and its all gone from my systems.

VMWare is the only game as far as I am concerned. m$ can just go away.

Re:VMWare is no good

[o-hayo]

Don't bother. Use VMWare for everything. It works great and your VMs will be portable across all your host servers. We have ESX here running Windows 2000 / 2003 / Ubuntu LAMP servers. I have Workstation and Player running light testing machines for Office 2007 Beta. I don't have to smash my laptop into pieces testing pre-release or beta software, including OS. If I have an image I need someone else to look at I can copy it and port it around our network. Having a mix of MS VPC and VMware would make that suck to the point of not being useful.

Ohya, and the only place I've seen virtualization used that WAS NOT VMWare, were some Microsoft courses I took awhile back.

Re:VMWare is no good

[dmihalko]

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

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

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

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

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

Re:VMWare is no good

[InsaneProcessor]

Only one question applies here.
Why?
Why is virtualizaition so interesting besides being "interesting"?
What will it do to make or save the anyone money or time?
In laymens terms: why should anyone care?

Re:VMWare is no good

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Ok, here is why. You can run multiple versions of the same operating system to test various deployments of software. You can run various versions of various operating systems and sandbox them, as well as taking "Snapshots in time" so if you want to test out some link some friend (moron) sent you, you can snapshot your install, click..become infected...and roll back without worry.

You can also buy a decent server and actually UTILIZE it. It is better if you buy 2 or 3. That way you can run whatever OS you need (relatively) on that hardware and not have 8 or 9 servers running at 15% because the vendor of the application you are serving will not certify it running with any other piece of software on it.

You can also migrate in case of a failure, or just lift the server off the hardware without worry. Your company has HP Proliant 185s and the leases are up. They are buying 385s to replace them. You simply move the images to the new machine and start them. The process saves tons of time, uses less electricity than several boxes, and you can also do disaster recovery by backing up the images and storing them at an off site location. If a disaster takes out your data center, you fire up the copies at the co-location and are back in business.

But other than that and a few more things.......its just cool to have without any real benefit....

Re:VMWare is no good

[M1FCJ]

You must have been using an old version. The latest build for VMWare server (version 1.0.1 I think), does SLES9, SLES10, SLED10, NLPOS, (K)ubuntu 6.06 (server + desktop editions), RHEL5 beta (20060830 version) server and client that is, openSuSE 10.0 and 10.1, and finally Centos 4.3 perfectly fine, with no special configuration anywhere. For a couple of weeks as a background task I've been building some core environments for our VMWare testing. I also installed DB2 and Oracle 10g on SLES and RHELs. My host platforms were openSUSE 10.0 and openSUSE 10.1.

On the other hand today for fun I tried OS/2 Warp 4, now that didn't work! Dammit VMWare, you are bloody useless!

Another OS I couldn't get (satisfactorily) working was Plan9.

Re:VMWare is no good

[TapeCutter]

Thank god someone here understands it.

I would just like to add there is no money in protecting grandma's machine with a VM but if you love granny and want more spare time it's a good idea.

Just to be sure, the reason developers praise vmare is money disguised as an "elegant solution". Large technically savy companies won't let anyone "fix" anything on their systems without first proving the fix will work, many are so parinoid they won't let you run diagnostic tools that are not already installed on their "train set".

To a "mission critical" commericial/inhouse software endevour that develops for and/or supports a few different O/S's, combined with a few DBMS's, combined with a couple of web severs,...and top it off with a few versions of their own stuff. If you have "finicky" customers who are prepared to pay for such "assurance", vmware is worth every penny.

virtual bsod?

[192939495969798999]

Help me/us countryfolk understand: So if you get a BSOD in a virtual environemnt, are you dead or not? I imagine that with some of the Windows hardware hooks, you'd probably be dead anyhow, so it wouldn't matter if you were virtually dead or really dead.

Re:virtual bsod?

[joeytmann]

Just for that VM. Now if the Host OS BSODs....thats bad for all VMs.

Re:virtual bsod?

[Jehosephat2k]

BSODs only crash the virtual environment, not the host machine.

Re:virtual bsod?

[Em Ellel]

> Just for that VM. Now if the Host OS BSODs....thats bad for all VMs.

Thats why you run a stripped down linux on Host and no apps (at least in server environment) :-)
I am surprised there is no "vmware-host" Linux distro - something perfectly barebones and lightweight to run vmware server on :-)Of course maybe there is one and I just have not found it yet ;-)

-Em

Re:virtual bsod?

[mrbooze]

I've even seem a VMWare Vmotion demonstration where a guest machine BSOD'd and you could still seamlessly move that guest machine across different VMWare servers, essentially moving the BSOD around.

Not sure what the practical point is, but it was amusing.

Re:virtual bsod?

[hockpatooie]

The body cannot live without the mind.

Re:virtual bsod?

[Tmack]

Its VMWare's non-free ESX server. You boot directly into a VMWare style OS, where you directly run VMs. It also has the benefit to pause/resume VMs, and even export them to other VM Servers on other hardware. Its like a Game Genie for servers!

tm

Re:virtual bsod?

[Jagasian]

VMware's ESX Server packaging of their virtualization technology includes a stripped down kernel that is basically designed to only run virtualizers. So you get improved performance and reliability due to the simplified host OS. More at the Wikipedia page for VMware.

Re:virtual bsod?

[goldarg]

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

Re:virtual bsod?

[Em Ellel]

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

I understand that, I was just wondering why there is no similar free distro for VMWare Server (the free VMWare one :-) )

-Em

Re:virtual bsod?

[gkhan1]

Its like a Game Genie for servers!

I love slashdot!

Re:virtual bsod?

[mcrbids]

A VM is just that: a virtual machine. It has its own BIOS. It acts like a full computer. It boots off a (virtual or real) disk. It has "hardware" - video card, sound card, network adapter, etc. all virtual representations of the real machine.

Think of it as a full computer within a window.

If you boot a copy of Windows, in a VM, it nevers "sees" the host system, it sees this virtual machine in such a way as it is indistinguishable from a real one. The only apparent connection between the virtual machine and the host (real) one from the perspective of the VM is that they can ping each other, over the network, same as any other two machines.

The host machine, however, can do a number of things. You can reset the VM, which is like hitting the reset button. You can save a snapshot - sort of like copying the entire HDD and saving a backup copy that you can revert to. You can suspend the VM, which is kind of like a pause button. The suspended VM can then be copied over to another computer, and the pause unset, so a single program can, without terminating or rebooting, be switched to another computer while still running!

This is the basis for using VMs for high availability.

And, it's pretty damned cool. I've had up to 4 virtual machines running on my Linux laptop, all within a virtual LAN. (they were networked, could ping each other, etc., each running applications, etc) It wasn't native speed, but it was quick enough to be useful.

Re:virtual bsod?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem I have found with ESX is that it requires a RAID controller just so you can setup Virtual Machines, and I find it very annoying that you have to shell out money for overpriced SCSI drives in order to make use of ESX. I know there are a few select IDE/SATA RAID cards that work with ESX, but I've only found one that is PCI Express and it is way too expensive for me. A few others are PCI-X, and don't even support SATA300. Does anyone know of a work around so that you can use ESX with an Areca (or any other brand) PCI Express RAID card?

Re:virtual bsod?

[Dr Caleb]

That would be a really *excellent* April Fools joke.

Re:virtual bsod?

[192939495969798999]

So if i "save" a virutal snapshot, and reboot the host, can i bring back the same virtual snapshot? Furthermore, could it apply to the HDD too, or only to RAM, etc when you restore? If it could, then wouldn't this be ideal to create a mono-instanced virtual terminal which could always be cleaned of viruses with a "reboot to clean saved snapshot"?

Re:virtual bsod?

[milimetric]

I agree with the sibling poster that said you should run this on a stripped down version of linux. However, computers fail, linux or not. Power goes out, mice chew network cables, etc. In addition to keeping the host stable, what you can do with VMWare (which is touched very lightly upon in the article) is to take the virtual disk storage off the physical host. This allows many hosts to have access to the virtual machines. So if one host all of a sudden bites the dust, just boot up your VMs from another host and up you go - almost no downtime compared to restoring from backups on a different physical machine.

Re:virtual bsod?

[Tmack]

The only problem I have found with ESX is that it requires a RAID controller just so you can setup Virtual Machines, and I find it very annoying that you have to shell out money for overpriced SCSI drives in order to make use of ESX. I know there are a few select IDE/SATA RAID cards that work with ESX, but I've only found one that is PCI Express and it is way too expensive for me. A few others are PCI-X, and don't even support SATA300.

Theres your problem, you are not in their target audience. Most people using this would be using it for a server or other higher end computer, where RAID is there by default. If you dont want to pay for "overpriced" scsi equipment, then you are definately not in their primary target. Would you really want to run misson critical servers on single threaded drives? RAID not only gives you the benefit of redundancy (except striping), but also speed enhancement (except mirroring). And, if I read their specs correctly, you can use ISCSI or other network attached storage to store the VMs on. If you are willing to spend the $$ on ESX, you probably are willing to purchse the required hardware to power it.

Tm

Re:virtual bsod?

[Anarke_Incarnate]

You can have speed increases with mirrors (albeit they are read speed increases, not write speed increases).

Also, you will get redundancy and fault tolerance with striping if it is done with parity (ala RAID 5 or RAID 6)

Re:virtual bsod?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

VMware Workstation does both. It also lets you create a tree of snapshots (and uses copy-on-write between them), so you can switch between your MSIE 5, MSIE 6, MSIE 7, DevStudio, Cygwin, and Borland images all separately.

Re:virtual bsod?

[mcrbids]

So if i "save" a virutal snapshot, and reboot the host, can i bring back the same virtual snapshot?

Sure can.

Furthermore, could it apply to the HDD too, or only to RAM, etc when you restore?

HDD are snapshotted, RAM is suspended. (I don't know of a way to revert to a suspension instance, but that might be a nice feature)

If it could, then wouldn't this be ideal to create a mono-instanced virtual terminal which could always be cleaned of viruses with a "reboot to clean saved snapshot"?

Sure is, that's what it's for. I've used this feature heavily to test installers for my software. It also comes in handy if you want to use a Cr4CKzz keygen, not that I've ever done anything like that! ;^)

Re:virtual bsod?

[chris_mahan]

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

Re:virtual bsod?

[Anonymous Coward]

SCSI != RAID. I never said that I didn't want to use RAID with ESX, just that I don't want to use SCSI with ESX.

Re:virtual bsod?

[DancesWithDupes]

> I imagine that with some of the Windows hardware hooks,
> you'd probably be dead anyhow, so it wouldn't matter
> if you were virtually dead or really dead.

Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do...go through his clothes and look for loose change.

- Miracle Max

Re:virtual bsod?

[gad_zuki!]

I had a trial copy of ESX about a year ago and it does exactly that. Err I think it was a stripped down fedorea/red hat distro. Of course ESX costs money and a free stripped down distro is well... free. Dunno, if youre good with linux/unix maybe you and a few friends can get together and begin the a project like that.

Re:virtual bsod?

[Aczlan]

dont know about VMware but VPC can do that, you can tell it to discard changes when yuo shut down the virtual pc and it is just like when you last saved changes...

Re:virtual bsod?

[nxtw]

Incorrect; VMware ESX uses a custom-made kernel. Linux is used for the console and runs in a VM.

Re:virtual bsod?

[Hatta]

even export them to other VM Servers on other hardware.

Is there anything Free that can do this?

Re:virtual bsod?

[eharvill]

ESX really shines when connected to a SAN shared by multiple ESX hosts. Vmotion is the coolest thing *ever*.

Re:virtual bsod?

[Em Ellel]

Why do people reply without really reading???

If you read the above, we are talking about Linux distribution for running VMWare Server, not VMWare Server itself. Non-free versions come with their own distro, free version doesn't. Not that its too hard to install any flavor of minimal linux but I am surprised noone has released a distro just for this.

-Em

Re:virtual bsod?

[jargon82]

I've done this recently with a linux iscsi target, for proof of concept. Used the shared storage to build a 2 node windows cluster, on 2 different vmware server hosts. It runs nicely but with a few quirks.

Re:virtual bsod?

[tootired]

I just use a real stripped down centos 4.3 and it's rock and roll.

I would love it if such a distro existed.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Re:virtual bsod?

[chris_mahan]

Ah, hum, ok then.

Re:virtual bsod?

[GaryOlson]

BSODs only crash the virtual environment, not the host machine.

Which is why I always connect my USB peripherals only to a VM on Workstation. Webcams, Palm TX, USB memory keys, etc have all BSOD my VM. 75 second reboot later, plug in the USB peripheral again and use the peripheral only in a VM.

Now if only the Exchange server was that responsive to a crash sigh

Re:virtual bsod?

[imemyself]

While its not a distro that you can just download for free, I *believe* that ESX runs on a Linux kernel.

Re:virtual bsod?

[riffraff]

Something really interesting I found out is that it appears to be running on a modified RH7.3.

Anecdotal evidence of VMWare being better

[Acer500]

It's mostly anecdotal, but I work at a Microsoft shop, and several developers still clamor for VMWare even though we have Virtual Server for free, as it seems to be a lot better performance-wise.

I'm still waiting for an update to Virtual PC, there the difference is abysmal.

Also, would it be possible to emulate some other hardware? The current video card emulated by Virtual PC won't support Aero.

Re:Anecdotal evidence of VMWare being better

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone listen to anything said here, this site and the people that post here are so skewed against MS it totally invalidates 90% of the content.

Re:Anecdotal evidence of VMWare being better

[dan828]

Wait a minute. You thought that you were supposed to be taking things seriously here? On Slashdot?

Re:Anecdotal evidence of VMWare being better

[RAMMS EIN]

Last time I checked, no virtualization solution supported hardware graphics acceleration. I was surprised; I didn't think it would be too hard to do using OpenGL.

Re:Anecdotal evidence of VMWare being better

[InsaneGeek]

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

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

Re:Anecdotal evidence of VMWare being better

[MarkRose]

They work great, too. I often play SimCity 4 Rush Hour in a Windows 2000 guest on a Kubuntu host. Just make sure you have lots of RAM.

Re:Anecdotal evidence of VMWare being better

[Acer500]

Cool! That was exactly what I was looking for...

I hope Microsoft copies this soon so we can get it:P

WAN

[COMON$]

Does anyone have any experience in virtualization technology in a WAN? Linux hosts vs MS hosts.

I have been researching the feasability of operating a WAN with multiple domains. Each domain to be hosted as a Virtual server in a central location where the client LAN's are connected via VPN. I have researched a bit of Xen, MS Virtual Server, and VMware. Currently vmware server is leading but as slashdotters we are all tinkerers. I am wondering who out there has tried this setup with vmware or Xen and their thoughts.

Re:WAN

[walt-sjc]

One of us seems to be confused. WAN is networking - outside the computer. Virtualization is inside the computer. Your question is kinda like asking if you can drive a car in a state that has a river. Can you manage a virtualized machine over a WAN? Yes. Can you access a VM over a WAN? Yes. A VM "server" is no different than a traditional server other than it doesn't have dedicated, direct, and unrestricted access to hardware resources. Keep in mind that accessing an application via a WAN when you have traditionally accessed it via a LAN may have a severe performance impact.

Re:WAN

[COMON$]

Sorry, let me be a bit more specific. I would like to create a WAN where all clients use a VPN to connect to a Virtual Server. This Server would use Server 2003 and Exchange to manage their Active directory and mail. Advantages are obvious, I am wanting to know if anyone has tried this setup (managing multiple domains through a VPN with a virtual server).

Technically this works, but I have yet to see examples of a working environment. Which means either no one has done it yet, it is not feasable at this point, or no one has felt like documenting it.

All of my experiences with wirtual server has been with a high speed LAN and single domain. Some people have mentioned things such as being aware of shadow copy capabilities of the host OS. I have no experience with XEN or accessing a virtual machine over a WAN.

Is this a bit clearer?

Re:WAN

[Anonymous Coward]

Either I misunderstand your question or you misunderstand the OSI model. This is not meant to be a flame but I can't think of a nicer way to say it.

Re:WAN

[COMON$]

Sorry I wrote the post in a hurry, I re-read it and it didnt make any sense at all. Check my better explanation in my reply above.

Re:WAN

[walt-sjc]

Yes it will work, but the reason people generally don't do it is because these type of applications would be very slow over a WAN - especially when users are used to LAN based mail. Think attachments and shared folders. This is, of course, assuming that you don't have some kind of very-high speed WAN (fiber, T3, etc.) Depending on how many users you have, how they use exchange, and your traffic volume levels, it may or may not be acceptable. You can simulate a wan in a lan environment by setting up a test network (using a few linux boxes with a few NIC's as routers) and use rate limiting to simulate your WAN speed. Then it's just a matter of trying it out.

In any larger company, you really NEED a test environment anyway that can simulate at least part of your network at a time. Hell, with vmware, you can actually setup a whole virtual network within ONE machine (just make sure you have a lot of RAM :-) I once ran a network of 12 virtual machines with a mix of Windows and Linux on my desktop that simulated 3 different networks and VPN links between them. It was pretty slow on a p4 2.4G with 1G. It's quite snappy on a dual-cpu, dual core opteron with 16G :-)

Re:WAN

[COMON$]

Yes I am looking at an 8/2 Cable line the cost around $500 a month where I am at, then upgrade to a beefier line as need arises. bandwith wise I have noticed that our current remote sites barely use a T1 as the shared drives are local to each network. Heck you can drop a Terrastation at a site and run full backups on weekends. As you know the expensive part is buying 15 servers and keeping them all up. If I could buy one large server and keep it at a central location it would cut costs dramatically for the client and myself. Not to mention solving hardware headaches. I have run test simulations, That is the beauty of vm servers, just as you said you can create wonderful network simulations. My question just was regarding if anyone had actually put the idea into a working environment with Xen or VMware server. How did it work out? What caviats were there? What kind of things do you see in the real world that you wouldnt see in person.

If this setup were to work well for me in a medium sized business. There is no reason it shouldnt work for a guy who manages small business networks. He could happily sit at home doing tech support over the phone and troubleshooting any Server issues without ever having to put pants on.

Re:WAN

[COMON$]

mispoke again "inperson" = in a test environment.

Re:WAN

[SillyNickName4me]

Running Server 2003 in a VM and accessing it over a wan is no different from accessing Server 2003 on a physical server over a wan. Running Server 2003 in a VM has issues, but the connection is seldom one of them. Specifically, terminal services in a VM is not what you want, and more generally, many single purpose VMs perform better then one big multi-purpose VM. That is true independent of lan or wan access.

Also, you don't want to use the vmware remote console for anything other then emergencies when not having a lan connection.

And yes, it can work, and I use it more or less daily (server 2003 on vmware esx over a vpn connection)

Re:WAN

[Courageous]

VMWare offers you the ability to produce an entire synthetic network, computers, bridges, etc, all as a virtual environment within one computer. There is this issue of calling such a thing a "WAN". Obviously not. But "LAN". Well it's a kind of VLAN, but certainly not as the term is generally used.

C//

Linux-for-Windows screensaver ?

[quiberon2]

The quick and dirty virtualisation is with the Linux-for-Windows Screensaver; screenshot here

Re:Linux-for-Windows screensaver ?

[RAMMS EIN]

Allow me to be the first to say: WTF, mate?!

The tricks the FOSS community comes up with never cease to amaze me.

Re:Linux-for-Windows screensaver ?

[quiberon2]

It's for real; it might take you a couple of days to download on broadband, but the machines have got all weekend. Or longer, if that's what is takes.

And no, I don't guarantee that it will save your screen !

Re:Linux-for-Windows screensaver ?

[Hatta]

I know all those words, but that post makes no sense.

What does a screensaver have to do with virtualization?

Re:Linux-for-Windows screensaver ?

[quiberon2]

You leave your Windows machine alone for a few minutes, it 'boots' a virtual Linux as a screensaver, becomes much more functional.

You close down the virtual Linux, the screensaver ends, and you are back to the Windows you know and love/hate, whichever.

Dream or nightmare, I know not which, it depends on where you are standing.

But it happens, and we haven't found anyone that needs to be paid for it yet !

Re:Linux-for-Windows screensaver ?

[Hatta]

I don't understand. If a screensaver loads, you're not using your computer. If you're not using your computer, it doesn't matter what OS it's running. Am I missing something?

Real Virtual

[Doc Ruby]

Where's the study/chart contrasting VMWare with Xen virtualization? Those are the two to watch - Microsoft will just copy whichever one (or features) serves MS better.

Re:Real Virtual

[value_added]

Where's the study/chart contrasting VMWare with Xen virtualization?

Probably in the section that's prominently labelled "RELATED CONTENT" that directly follows the article? A virtual representation of the relevant link:

How does Xen stack up against Virtual Server, VMware?

Shame they require registration.

At any rate, I'm sure everyone would agree that the vwmare Wikipedia Article is probably the most comprehensive source for information. Comparisons with other technologies are included.

Re:Real Virtual

[Doc Ruby]

Thanks for the helpful kick in the head.

OT: That comparison says "Benchmarks run against Xen and VMware show that, in some respects, Xen performs better by almost an entire order of magnitude." I wish we geeks had already gone through the kind of discussion about "orders of magnitude" that we had about decimal vs binary "mega/giga" (MB/MiB). I'd like to know the difference between orders of decimal magnitude and orders of binarary magnitubi. Decimal seems an arbitrary order scale, especially when we usually talk in terms of centissimal orders (percentage). But binary seems most appropriate, self-scaling according to the size of the base unit.

Re:Real Virtual

[amorsen]

But binary seems most appropriate, self-scaling according to the size of the base unit.

I find e more natural.

Re:Real Virtual

[Wesley Felter]

Microsoft funded Xen and then copied the design almost exactly for their Viridian hypervisor.

Re: Real Virtual

[dunstan]

This paper (beware, highly graphic PDF) gives a nice overview of the state of the virtualisation union in July.

Re: Real Virtual

[Doc Ruby]

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for. When InfoWorld says the MS product is the worst, an unknown one (Virtuozzo, unknown to me) is very good (because of ease of use), and the open-source one is apparently the best (Xen, both of VMs and OSS), it's well worth reading.

Evaluated both Virtual Server vs VMWare Server

[duplicate-nickname]

We have been looking at which technology to go with and I currently have two production systems up hosting virtual servers (one with VMWare Server, the other with Virtual Server 2003 R2). These are hosted on Windows 2003 Servers, and the guests are also Windows 2003. Although both products have been performing fairly well, we have had a few problems with the VMWare server (pausing/unpausing the server through the command line fails occasionally). Also, when SP1 comes out for VS 2003, it will officially support shadow copy so we can do live backups of the virtual images.

At this point, we have decided to go with MS Virtual Server to consolidate our servers. On the other hand, all of our test, development and demo environments are in VMWare Workstation and VMWare Player. VMWare Workstation is way ahead of Virtual PC.

Re:Evaluated both Virtual Server vs VMWare Server

[curmudgeous]

Your big mistake was in putting VMware on top of Windows. I'd advise you to go with their ESX product (or whatever their current release is called) which runs on its own custom linux kernel.

Re:Evaluated both Virtual Server vs VMWare Server

[Anonymous Coward]

.....which runs on its own custom linux kernel

No, ESX doesn't run Linux. It runs it's own OS, it just uses a virtual Linux machine as the console.

Re:Evaluated both Virtual Server vs VMWare Server

[MartijnL]

Which is Service Console. In version 3 it's based on RHEL 3 so many people get confused and think they are running RHEL 3.

Re:Evaluated both Virtual Server vs VMWare Server

[MartijnL]

Please get some Linux expertise into this project and evaluate either VMware Server on Linux or ESX 3.0 (which you license as a Virtual Infrastructure in Starter / Standard / Enterprise) flavors. If you are serious about running production data centers with virtual servers than you definitely have to evaluate VI3.

any-any patches

[just-a-stone]

i use vmware since version 4.0 and it always worked as expected. the one thing i don't like about it is sealing with any-any patches. we build and deploy our own linux kernels and therefore, we have to recompile the vmware modules.
this wouldn't be the problem, if only vmnet or any other vmware module wouldn't need to be patched to avoid freezes. sometimes we had to alter the build perl scripts because it does not take the gcc from the environment but searches it for itself (and that diesn't have to be the version our kernel was compiled with). a better update system or maybe distribution integration (commercial branch) would be much better.

i know it's another kind of virtualization and maybe a bit off-topc, but since they are availeable, i love solaris 10 zones - if another virtual solaris box is all you need (haven't tried linux in zones yet and wouldn't use it in production systems), it's almost perfect.

I finally replaced Windows at work

[TheLetterZ]

I finally replaced XP at work with Kubuntu. The one thing holding me back was actually none other than iTunes - yeah sure I could use amarok, but I have purchased a lot of music on iTMS plus I like iTunes' radio channels and iTunes in general. And by the way, I also have a lot of historic Outlook mail.

I installed VMWare on my Dell laptop, created a 30GB partition (of which 20GB is MP3/M4P), installed the Dell XP Pro OEM version in VMWare, which automatically picked up the system's XP key, and I got iTunes running in VMWare, Office 2003 for historical mail and the odd Word/Powerpoint/Excel documents which OpenOffice 2 has difficulties handling.

I guess the ironic part here is that I had to install an antivirus program on a laptop running Linux, but now that Evolution gets along just fine with the company's Exchange 2003 server (even the calendar entries shows up - I am impressed at how good it actually is!), I am in general a much happier human being running Linux, and I have the best of both worlds (depending on your point of view) being able to run iTunes and Office 2003 on my Linux laptop!

Re:I finally replaced Windows at work

[flyingfsck]

How do you run Office 2003 on Linux? AFAIK CxOffice doesn't support it yet.

Re:I finally replaced Windows at work

[Anonymous Coward]

" How do you run Office 2003 on Linux? AFAIK CxOffice doesn't support it yet."

read, read, read...

"... I installed VMWare on my Dell laptop, created a 30GB partition (of which 20GB is MP3/M4P), installed the Dell XP Pro OEM version in VMWare, which automatically picked up the system's XP key, and I got iTunes running in VMWare, Office 2003 for historical mail and the odd Word/Powerpoint/Excel documents which OpenOffice 2 has difficulties handling. "

before typing

he (or she) installed linux, installed VMware, then installed XP, MS office, itunes, ...

Re:I finally replaced Windows at work

[alohatiger]

We've moved beyond RTFA to RTF Post or RTF Previous Paragraph.

Re:I finally replaced Windows at work

[nickgrieve]

I finally replaced XP at work with Kubuntu. The one thing holding me back was actually none other than iTunes - yeah sure I could use amarok, but I have purchased a lot of music on iTMS plus I like iTunes' radio channels and iTunes in general. And by the way, I also have a lot of historic Outlook mail.

By my count, thats two things...

I installed VMWare on my Dell laptop, created a 30GB partition (of which 20GB is MP3/M4P), installed the Dell XP Pro OEM version in VMWare, which automatically picked up the system's XP key, and I got iTunes running in VMWare, Office 2003 for historical mail and the odd Word/Powerpoint/Excel documents which OpenOffice 2 has difficulties handling.

So... thats 3 things...

I guess the ironic part here is that I had to install an antivirus program on a laptop running Linux, but now that Evolution gets along just fine with the company's Exchange 2003 server (even the calendar entries shows up - I am impressed at how good it actually is!), I am in general a much happier human being running Linux, and I have the best of both worlds (depending on your point of view) being able to run iTunes and Office 2003 on my Linux laptop!

No, your running, Windows, and Office, and Linux... You have not "finally replaced Windows at work" you've finally installed Linux at work...

ESX vs GSX

[aapold]

The free one is fine for messing around with, and probably better than the Microsoft version anyway on that platform (plus the other stuff it can do), but the ESX is where its at for more serious work...

Unlike the free version, you don't install it on a server that's already running something like windows server 2003 or ubuntu, you instead install it as the base OS on the box, and then run whatever virtual servers you want on top of that. Its one less layer to worry about, and the performance is superior.

I've run just about every kind of server we have on here via this, even older things like Novell servers. Getting rid of old servers is one of the best reasons to go to vmware... They have a migration tool that essentially virtualizes and existing box, as long as no one's hitting it directly by the IP address the next day they come in most of them won't even know they're hitting a virtual server.

In most cases I find it easier to not tell them, otherwise people somehow get worried if you try to explain to them that they're not using a physical server...

Re:ESX vs GSX

[lowlight777]

i've been using ESX and Virtual Center (VC) for that last few months and have to say it rocks. i have successfully installed XP, 2003, 2003r2, 2000, Ubuntu, RedHat2, RedHat AS2.1, Suse9, Suse10, Suse8. all with out issue for my testing. once i'm finished with this project i plan on upgrading to Virutal Infrastructure 3. i've been completely impressed with VMware, there stuff works really well.

Re:ESX vs GSX

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always try running MS Virtual Server on Windows Longhorn CORE to get the same sort of experience. I wonder when the benchmarks will be coming out for this...

Re:ESX vs GSX

[Anomalyst]

One point I have not seen made is that your host machine is "out of step" and "non-homogeneous" with windows guests. You are not exposed to Windows based exploits against your base infrastruture. ESX is not subject to "Patch Tuesdays" so you do not have to bring down all the guests and reboot the host and run the risk of a poorly QA'd path hosing your host. I guess you could vmotion them, but why use GSX and buy add-on capability that is bundled with VI3? With the new boot from iSCSI in ESX 3.0 life can get even easier for a even a medioum size shop.

Re:ESX vs GSX

[eharvill]

I've run just about every kind of server we have on here via this, even older things like Novell servers. Getting rid of old servers is one of the best reasons to go to vmware... They have a migration tool that essentially virtualizes and existing box, as long as no one's hitting it directly by the IP address the next day they come in most of them won't even know they're hitting a virtual server.

I've had good luck doing this with Leostream. Not so much with Platespin although I have not used their latest release. Amazing tools nonetheless.

Why do people buy the MS promises?

[whoever57]

From the article:

Nevertheless, said Wolf, a large number of IT shops are investigating Microsoft's offering. "They are buying in to the future that Microsoft is promising."

When are people who control IT budgets going to see that MS always delivers less than promised, later than promised? OK, I know that many (most?) s/w development projects are late to deliver, but when comparing something that exists today with promises from MS, why would one believe the promise?

Re:Why do people buy the MS promises?

[Anonymous Coward]

When are people who control IT budgets going to see that MS always delivers less than promised, later than promised?

Simple, your average CIO/CTO does not have a brain big enough to understand something that does not look familiar like their desktop. Makes them feel comfortable thinking they can move files around like their big admins do.

I don't mean this as a jab, I mean this for real. There are no other explainations I have ever heard, FUD and BS excluded that would explain why you would run a sever that:

• Has graphics and screen savers burrning CPU that could be used for network users.
  
• Is hacked and so insecure it costs a lot to patch, maintain and remediate
  
• Is inferior in network capacity and reliability
  
• Scales so poorly compared to the alternatives.
  
• Add it up, AV, FW, compiler, DB costs etc, costs more
  

But it looks pretty and similar to their desktop. And maybe their retirement fund has shares in Micro$oft and maybe comes with with a free lunch. Or perhaps this is all wrong and it is so management does not need to hire smart people.

OBVIOUS

[BarkerSTG]

if this were fark.com .... tag on this would be Obvious. ;)

Re:OBVIOUS

[sunshineluv7]

..then I'll post it to Fark.com :o)

VMWare hardware virtualization?

[aclarke]

This seems as good a place as any to ask these quesions... Last weekend I bought a core 2 duo CPU and related hardware for a new home server. I decided to do all my server work within virtual machines, and am using VMWare. Debian and Ubuntu don't support my motherboard yet (Asus P5B-VM) so I'm using a Windows Server 2003 x64 trial as my host OS.

I haven't been following hardware that much in recent years, but I know the conroe chips have hardware-based virtualization. I'm pretty sure Microsoft's Virtual Server supports this, as does Xen, but does VMWare? This seems like it would be a Big Deal. Just for fun I ran super pi on my host OS and on my Windows virtual machine, and actually got a FASTER score in the VM so I'm not disappionted by its performance so far.

Also, I've noticed that VMWare is a 32-bit program, so how is its support for 64-bit virtual machines? I only have 2GB of RAM at the moment, but can I get a 64-bit Windows VM to recognize 6GB of RAM if I load up my host?

Re:VMWare hardware virtualization?

[Em Ellel]

Also, I've noticed that VMWare is a 32-bit program, so how is its support for 64-bit virtual machines? I only have 2GB of RAM at the moment, but can I get a 64-bit Windows VM to recognize 6GB of RAM if I load up my host?

You have to remmember that VMWare is virtualization and NOT emulation - meaning that your CPU is doing the actual processing, not the VMWare software - so if your CPU supports 64 bit, it will be 64 bit capable. I am not sure about the memory question though....

-Em

Re:VMWare hardware virtualization?

[Wolfrider]

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

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

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

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

--Check the Index under R (Ram).

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

Re:VMWare hardware virtualization?

[EbbTide]

The latest version of VMWare (at least ESX 3.0 anyway) supports 64 bit virtualization, hardware virtualization, and also has over the 3.6gb ceiling for memory. I'm not sure what GSX offers.

Re:VMWare hardware virtualization?

[BrookHarty]

Honestly, if a VM requires more than 3.6GB RAM

I disagree, the idea of a virtualized OS's, with Vmware ESX, is you can assign resources during runtime, ram/cpu's... Sometimes you want a couple more CPU's or more ram.

VMware Debian problem?

[radu.stanca]

Didn`t check with the latest version, but with 4.0 I was unable to install Sarge, anyway I`m using vserver for any virtualization thingie, not so powerfull but more stable than Xen, atm.

Re:VMware Debian problem?

[xmodem_and_rommon]

I'm running etch in vmware server without problems. What profile are you using? Vmware doesn't provide one for debian.

Re:VMware Debian problem?

[radu.stanca]

I was some months ago, so i don`t remember, probably "Red Hat" or "Other"...keep in mind that it was VMware 4.0 so probably the bug a fixed.

Portability

[Spez]

I have tested Virtual PC, Virtual Server and VMWare Server and VMWare Workstation for our testing environment, and it seems MS is more flexible in a way: you can easily copy a Virtual Machine from one computer to an other even if they have different hardware. With VMWare workstation, i had strange problems.

I didn't have any of those problems using VMWare Server, but the web interface of MS VServer was really more usefull for our build machines, test environments and portability too.

BUT, MS doesn't support x64 Guest Environment... so even though we have mostly a MS environment (using VirtualServer), we had to use a couple of VMWare Server machines to use WinXP x64...

Re:Portability

[schmu_20mol]

...you can easily copy a Virtual Machine from one computer to an other even if they have different hardware. With VMWare workstation, i had strange problems.

Hm, must be a really obscure setup. Never encountered that one. So, to give the other view. There are people out there that use this idea successfully with VMWare workstation.

Re:Portability

[InsaneGeek]

I'd wonder what your workstation configuration was, as VM portability is the main focus of VMware. A VM should always be portable between different physical hardware, that's the whole point, they are so stubborn about protability that they won't incorporate certain changes because it requires OS modifications. Everything except for the CPU is virtualized using the same across the board, motherboard type, ethernet card, etc. I regularly take win & linux VM's running on our HP DL585 opteron ESX server, copy them to my Sun Opteron Linux box and to my Intel Windows laptop running vmware server with no problem, in the past I did the same with workstation (with different hardware win intel laptops to linux intel workstation). I've never heard of the problem that you are having, with the exception of people using different versions of vmware (create vm on newer version of vmware, and run it on older version without reinstalling vmware tools), and using raw SATA disk paritions instead of vmdk disk files.

Re:Portability

[Lurking Grue]

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

Re:Portability

[Anonymous Coward]

you can easily copy a Virtual Machine from one computer to an other even if they have different hardware. With VMWare workstation, i had strange problems.

I've been able to move guests from a VMWare 5.5 installation running on XP Pro to my VMWare Server 1.0 installation running on Fedora Core 4 with no problems.

There is a caveat when you do this, though. When you create the guest in VMWare workstation, you need to set it to Legacy. The VMWare Workstation enhanced mode will only work with workstation 5.5 and not with any other versions of VMWare. That may be what you were seeing?

Re:Portability

[jimicus]

I have; it came from trying to migrate a VM by creating a new VM on the target host, pausing the VM on the source host then copying the files which formed the disk image across. This is about all you can do with VMWare server as it doesn't support the "on-the-fly" moving offered by VMWare ESX.

Turns out that VMWare is able to emulate a few different fundamental pieces of hardware (in this case SCSI cards) and the new VM had been configured with a different emulated SCSI card to the original.

Re:Portability

[Raideen]

Wow, I've never encountered that issue. I've moved VMWare 2.0 images to VMWare 5.0 workstation without any problems from a Windows 95 box to a Debian Linux box.

VMware wins hands down...

[rmallico]

The fact that VMware Server, Workstation and ESX all can run 64bit guests on top of a 32bit OS/host (when the appropriate 64bit extensions (AMD64, Intel VT) is all that I needed to hear.. :)

Re:VMware wins hands down...

[MartijnL]

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

Oh yeah?

[duffer_01]

Whoever came up with this has never tried to install DB2 in VMWare. Good luck with that.

Re:Oh yeah?

[Dretep]

My department actually has, on an Linux guest running on ESX.

Re:Oh yeah?

[nolife]

Maybe this does not apply to you but...

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

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

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

Re:Oh yeah?

[div_2n]

Who needs luck when you have documentation?

Re:Oh yeah?

[M1FCJ]

Did DB v8.2 on SLES9 SP3 today on VMWare Server 1.0.1 - no problems at all. It must be your pre-emptive good luck will helping me. :)

VMWare Workstation rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

I used VMWare Workstation when it was just "VMWare" and it was sluggish. However, since upgrading to 5.5 it runs great and every VM I've tried to install on it was a snap. I'm using the Linux host version-- running it on a FC5 system and am able to run Windows-only apps, such as SQL Server, in a guest OS.

I also took a look at Parallels VM and it looked like a cheaper knockoff of VMWare Workstation. For the price it seemed fine but they didn't (and still don't-- I believe) support 64-bit host operating systems. VMWare Workstation supports 64-bit perfectly. I run a Windows guest all of the time on my linux system that I only reboot when I upgrade a kernel. I've never had any crashes as a result of running VMWare.

VI3 is wonderful. Just don't get the .0 revision

[csoto]

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

IBM VM

[dayyan]

IBM's Virtual Machine (VM) is decades ahead of VMWare. It was first available in 1966. It's reliability, scalability, features, and more; have been enhanced since its beginnings, it is trusted by the most data and reliability sensitive companies and corporations in the world. It isn't just a hypervisor like VMWare or Microsoft's Virtual Suite--it's a full fledged operating system.

It bothers me to watch those whom praise this or that without knowing more about it. Yes, VMWare is good, especially for the PC. However, don't lose sight of superior advancements we've already made in the name of hype and evangelism.

Re:IBM VM

[eric2hill]

Riiiight, so when my boss asks me to run a couple of Windows 2003 Server instances on our new half-million dollar IBM baby in a VM, what do I tell him?

Re:IBM VM

[dayyan]

In this case someone has made a mistake, as the IBM VM does not run Windows. You probably want to find out who purchased the IBM Server, and deal with them. Obviously it was an amateur purchase descision since you aim to run Windows. VM is a high-end server technology. It is best used for running enterprise-scale mixed workloads.

Re:IBM VM

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point... price/vm? If I had million dollars worth of computing power for VMs, I would want the ability to run any operating system which did not depend on any type of arbitrary hardware. Suffice to say, a million dollar baby blue only runs 2 (maybe 3) operating systems. Unless your shop only runs those precious 2 (maybe 3) operating systems, then that's a lot of $$$ thrown away....

vmware, virtualpc, xen, et al., bring virtualization to the masses, not just the select few/elite.... let's say your typical server will run you about $4000. Now, lets say you need 4 of them... that's $16000 for that investment. If you use VM, and make some good investments in HW (storage and others), you could probably end up saving at least $6000... Do this a couple of times, it adds up...

so have fun with your baby blue, while the rest of us take advantage of commodity hardware to get what we need....

Re:IBM VM

[MartijnL]

You are missing the point. VMware is so great because it enables you to do VM with regular x86 machines. Which (for a lot of companies, even big ones) is what is available in the datacenter.

Re:IBM VM

[eric2hill]

Exactly. There's no sense in going to IBM's VM solution on *very* expensive hardware for anything but the largest companies. I work for a 100MM/year company and some of IBM's low-end big iron is still vastly more expensive that dual or quad Opteron boxes from Sun. I can use VMWare and do much more with much less, which helps my companies bottom line.

Re:IBM VM

[dayyan]

It seems this has become a discussion about BIG vs Small systems.

Yes I agree that it is very expensive. However in some cases a high-end solution can be cheaper than buying multiple x86 boxes. Don't forget to factor in switches, routers, firewalls, cabling, disks, support, and software costs. On a mainframe system such as the z900 much of this is virtualized. Also don't forget that most distributed products--including Oracle--are licensed per processor/socket. This can be as high as $40,000 (Oracle). VM (and probably VMWare) work around this.

There IS a bias about mainframe and mainframe software these days. It consequently appears people are taking a full circle backwards and rallying behind the workstation model. Although an x86 workstation cluster model may initially be cheaper, the cost of support, power, maintenance, and room that they need sometimes outweigh the cost of a single mainframe running VM.

Now I'm not trying to demonize workstations. All suitable systems should be considered and their total costs compared. A lot of people just don't consider anything but the MCSE and CISCO solution.

In reply to the previous poster, VMWare is an excellent solution for the workstation/PC server. I just wanted to remind people there are many other virtual hardware and software systems out there simply by pointing out one, which happends to be one of the first.

Re:IBM VM

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell him to run linux :)

Apples and Oranges

[jmn2519]

This isn't really a fair comparison. VMWare ESX Server runs on bare metal - it is the base OS. Virtual Server has to run on top of an existing operating system like XP or Win2003 Server. The problem with the MS approach is that you're constantly having to drop the host operating system to load patches or reboot (just like every other windows machine on the planet).

So yeah, if you want an enterprise class virtualization solution you SHOULD be running VMWare. Things should be interesting in a year or two when M$ releases their bare metal virtualization engine. I believe the code name at the moment is viridian.

Gaming in VMware

[opieum]

In case anyone is not aware, you can play some games (very experimental feature) in VMware 5.5 VMs. It supports DX8.1 games. There is even WIP list on the vmware forums to post working games as well. (if you are really intrested google it. not too hard to find) So even still this is a leg up on Parallels and MS/XEN (MS and XEN are partnered up in case you havent read up on that). With limited success you can run an Aqumark3 benchmark with moderate performance. MS and the others in the virtualization space do not have 3d as far along as VMware does at this point. The fact that they are also actively working on a version for the Mac should also say something for the Mac fans out there about 3d support. VMware tools and the SVGA driver is what eneables the 3d ability as well as code in the VMware. A beta for the Mac is due out soon if you go on the VMware page and sign up. Hopefully once the next version of workstation is out there will be DX9 support meaning alot more games can run on it. Performance aside the fact it can run games is a nice feature.

But is it cursed?

[birder]

Well, VMware Server comes with a free Frogurt.

Re:But is it cursed?

[itchy92]

But the frogurt is also cursed.

Re:But is it cursed?

[Random Destruction]

that's good!

Re:But is it cursed?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it comes with your choice of toppings!

Let's see what Longhorn virtualization has to offe

[EbbTide]

We currently have multiple ESX 2.5 machines for our production VMs, and are testing ESX 3.0 on our development box. We also have a couple of Virtual Server 2005 R2 boxes. Right now I can tell you that in an enterprise environment, ESX wins against VS 2005 hands down. Virtual Server 2005 is NOT an enterprise level virtualization environment. However, there are some major changes coming with Longhorn's virtualization, which isn't so far in the future now. A lot of goodies are on the way, and a lot of it is baked right into the OS. Microsoft is making a MAJOR push into virtualization. Don't count them out, especially if you're a Microsoft shop. If your just getting into virtualization, my recommendation is to set up a box for each of the freebies and try them out. If nothing else, knowing both will look good on your resume.

Apples vs Oranges

[rsturbonutter]

Surely this isn't a fair or even comparison - they're comparing VMWare ESX which runs on bare-metal against Microsoft Virtual Server which runs on top of Windows (XP/2003) so obviously ESX has an advantage as it runs directly on the hardware. If they compared VMWare GSX (now VMWare Server) against Microsoft Virtual Server it'd be a much fairer comparison. We're looking at moving to Virtual Servers at work and at present Microsoft Virtual Server is winning because from the tests we've performed comparing it in terms of performance and ease-of-use against VMWare Server there's no difference, and we're a Microsoft shop so we're going to stick with what we know.

Re:Apples vs Oranges

[Slashcrap]

Surely this isn't a fair or even comparison - they're comparing VMWare ESX which runs on bare-metal against Microsoft Virtual Server which runs on top of Windows (XP/2003) so obviously ESX has an advantage as it runs directly on the hardware.

Surely the fact that VMWare do actually offer a version that runs on bare metal while Microsoft don't, is an obvious advantage to VMWare?

Or do you think that people who need that kind of performance in an enterprise enviroment are going to hold off using VMWare because it wouldn't be fair to MS when they don't have a similar product?

we're a Microsoft shop so we're going to stick with what we know.

Oh, I guess you do.

As for me...

[Klaidas]

As for me, VMware really is miles ahead - I can install it on my Ubuntu to run Vista. Or... I can install it on Windows to run Ubuntu? (never tried this).
I doubt that I could do that on MS Virtual Server.

The real takeaway

[kukerdan]

Is... virtualization is going to cost you more time/problems/personell so the cost you save by going virtual is going to come at you ten fold Dan sikorsky - Systems Admin RHWI inc.

Re:The real takeaway

[tr3y]

Not true at all. Instead of buying a new server or ghosting an existing machine you can deploy a template. VMware trots out the Discovery channel folks quite a bit, they cut down requisition time for a new server from 1 week to a few hours.

Sure you have some problems occasionally, a vmdk might get locked on ESX or an unsupported guest like Debian take some work to get up and running. But if you lost a machine all you need to do is restore the VM and you're up and running again and only had to wait for your tape drive.

Maybe you do need more personel. But if you do it's only because you're able to run more machines in less physical space with a lower hardware cost than before.

*gasp* What a surprise!

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Microsoft's half-assed clone is of lower quality than the product of a company that basically invented the technology. News at 11.

Lunch

[skidv]

Lunch on Monday was excellent, except that they served spinach. It was cooked, but I still left it on my plate.

*today*

[nurb432]

Tomrrow, microsoft will take over the VM market with a marginal product, but will still take over.

Mod Parent UP

[Jehosephat2k]

lol

How come

[Monsuco]

why can't there be a good FOSS alternative to virtualization? I mean, we have Xen, which requires either special hardware or you must be using linux on both, or we have QEMU, an emulator. We can use KQEMU, but that is closed source, and QVM86 hardly works as a replacment. I wish there was a FOSS virtualization program of the same quality as VMWare or Virtual PC.

Also valid for VMware

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/highlights/virt ualization/faq.mspx

Q. If Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, is used as the host environment, am I granted four virtual licenses? What if VMWare is the host?

A. Licensing does not depend on which virtualization technology is used. With a license for Windows Server 2003 R2, Enterprise Edition, you can run one instance of the software in a physical operating system environment and up to four instances in virtual operating system environments. With VMWare GSX Server, this means you can run one physical instance plus four virtual instances. With VMWare ESX Server, it means you can run four virtual instances because there is no need for a physical instance.

Re:Also valid for VMware

[Feyr]

ah thanks. i had actually been there, guess i just skipped over the vmware part

Re:Also valid for VMware

[Nevynxxx]

Which leaves the question "do the physical and virtual instances have to be on the same hardware" hanging.

The specific difference between GSX and ESX in the answer would imply yes, everything up to that point would imply no.

enjoy your journey, I've got project work to do...

[Vorga]

How useless is that statement: "Virtualization is a journey, not a project." For those of use who actually need to work in a business its a project. It has a timeframe, stakeholders, completion, and budget. A journey is a luxury. I really sick of the "but its an ongoing journey" type comments. A perfect way to get me to /delurk and rant, and I consider myself trolled. Andrew

RAID 10

[snuf23]

Actually if you use RAID level 10 you get speed and mirroring. You'll lose 50% capacity (same as a normal mirror) and need 4 drives to implement.

Understand your product!

[Taimat]

It seems as though many people here don't know the difference between products. They say "VMWARE" when they mean "VMWARE Workstation." OK People, here's the breakdown.

VMWARE Virtual Infrastructure 3 (formally ESX)
No real compitition

VMWARE Virtual Server (formally GSX)
XEN
Microsoft Virtual Server

VMWARE Workstation
Microsoft Virtual PC

Sigh

Re:Understand your product!

[neminem]

Yeah, and Xerox sells fax machines, paper, software... Coca-Cola produces juices, teas and water... we still use the names to refer pretty much exclusively to copiers and soda, respectively, because that's what they're known for. I'm going to keep referring to VMware Workstation as simply "VMware", and there's nothing you can do about it.

Re:Understand your product!

[Taimat]

Thank you for showing your intelligence.

NT4

[dunstan]

One of the uses for VMware which perhaps was unintended is to enable people to run NT version 4 on up to date hardware. You'd be surprised how many businesses out there have an application on which they depend, but where the developers have disappeared, and they chooses to continue running NT4 rather than update the app.

And even with the layers of abstraction, a VM on current hardware is much faster than running NT4 on 5+ year old metal.

Re:The real takeaway, OT

[MoToMo]

Weird, another Dan Sikorsk(i/y) on slashdot?

Not that name collisions are that uncommon, just that they're uncommon within a given group (slashdot) with less common names (Sikorski).

If you've ever wanted to talk to another Dan Sikorski(i/y), email me: me (AT) dan sikorski . com

Check out moka5

[joewhaley]

Check out the bare metal version of our moka5 LivePC Engine. It is pretty much exactly what you are referring to: A tiny, stripped-down version of Linux made for running VMware virtual machines. It includes some neat features like being able to publish and share your virtual machine with others, "subscribe" to a virtual machine and automatically get updates, and demand-page and cache virtual machines so you can run them without having to download the whole thing.

There are already lots of preconfigured Linux environments that you can download and try out with a single click. My favorite is the LiveCD feature, where you can try out a LiveCD without having to burn it or even download the file - the system demand-pages only the blocks that it needs. Pretty slick.