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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."
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.
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/
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.
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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.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
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.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
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.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
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.
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.
Ya I know I went overboard :)
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
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.
The quick and dirty virtualisation is with the Linux-for-Windows Screensaver; screenshot here
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.
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make install -not war
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!
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.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
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...
I wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
Whoever came up with this has never tried to install DB2 in VMWare. Good luck with that.
Adventure City Tours
Search the Vmware forums. Basically if your 64-bit processor supports hardware VT, you can run 64-bit guests.
r yID=1
h tml/wwhelp.htm
http://www.vmware.com/community/index.jspa?catego
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/
--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.
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== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
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.
Honestly, we're quite happy with VI3, but we need 3.0.1, due in October. There are a few honestly quite stupid bugs in 3.0 that need to be attended to. The most aggravating part is the license server (based on flexlm, which is usually not so bad). Licensing is the one thing where VMware is going backwards on (although the COST of licensing is quite good now).
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
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.
The virtual copies are tied to the OS, not the VM software. So yes, you can run 4 copies legally on VM.
Well, VMware Server comes with a free Frogurt.
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.
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...
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....