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VMWare Rolls Out Vista Virtualization
MsManhattan writes "VMWare Inc. today is slated to introduce a new version of its workstation virtualization software that supports Windows Vista. The upgrade, VMWare Workstation 6, enables users to run Vista as a host or a guest operating system. Additionally, it allows users to store a virtual machine setup on a portable device — like as a USB drive — and transfer the set-up to another computer. Virtualization, an old concept that has gained new momentum, can help organizations optimize their infrastructures but it can also create expensive management headaches. Just the same, the analyst group Gartner predicts that three million virtual machines will be in use by 2009, up from today's 500,000."
I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista performance problems in this new version: running Vista as a virtual OS even under the commercial versions of VMWare was slower than dirt in the last cut.
Looks like 64 bit support is getting better, although Feisty Fawn isn't supported as a host OS yet. From the release notes:
New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems
This release provides experimental support for the following operating systems:
* 32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 (Beta, formerly called 4.0 Update 5) as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4 (Beta) as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 7.04 as a guest operating system
This release provides full support for the following operating systems:
* 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 6.10 as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Mandriva Linux 2007 as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Solaris 10 Update 3 as guest operating system
* 32-bit Novell Netware 6.5 SP5 as guest operating system
What I like about virtualization is that you can add a layer of security with it. Virus? Trojan? Spyware? No problem. Just don't save settings or blow away the infected virtual image. More people should surf the web from a virtual machine.....it isn't like you need the full blown performance of the host O/S to surf the web.
You can mount directories from the host O/S to save certain pieces of information (bookmarks for example) so that they persist across VMs. Everything else, you aren't really worried about.
Layne
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Depends on the version - you need to buy the most expensive one in order to be allowed to virtualise. Big surprise, huh?
To clarify: I'm using a system whose hardware is several times larger than Vista's recommended specs (and without Aero) and Vista still runs many times (10x?) slower under the commercial VMWare (v5) that it does when I wipe the box and just install Vista. Other Windows OSs on the same box are quite snappy under commercial VMWare (v5).
I'm hoping VMWare version 6 fixes this.
Why not just buy a copy of windows XP? If you're a web developer and you think it's important to test in IE, then you should pay for the required licenses to run it.
Or use ies4linux
You could just download Microsoft's Virtual PC XP image for IE 6 testing and convert it to a VMWare image. Then you can make an copy of it and do a Windows Update to install IE 7 and you can test both versions.
n d-ie7-running-on-a-single-machine.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/11/30/ie6-a
Certainly looks like it. And as for the managerial problems - well, I RTFA, and I couldn't make out any specific problems (apart from possible licensing issues, which is always a good one because you can say that about almost any technology you like). Read like a typical Gartner puff piece designed to spend a couple of hundred words not saying anything in particular, but generate a few soundbites for a mindless PHB.
What is this, digg?
Post the actual link rather than your (or someone elses) blog in hopes of getting ad revenue.
I Like virtual machines but I wish they would allow true 3d acceleration. I have an xp machine(for gaming) with a virtual ubuntu installed. However I cannot install beryl because of the limitations of the system. If there is a way and I missed it, let me know.
There's nothing in the software that stops you virtualising, (see http://tinyurl.com/2g2zh5), and if you get Vista 'Home' via MSDN you are even legally allowed to do it, but only for 'testing' purposes.
The main point is to stop big organisations from using cheap versions of Vista instead of expensive ones. They are (a) the people most likely to be using virtualisation and (b) the least likely to use sw outside of the EULA.
I don't think many people are seriously considering VMWare as a replacement for the traditional desktop. Virtualization is typically used to replace multiple physical servers with one larger server.
This is very useful for organizations with hundreds of servers, many of which may be only running a single resource-friendly application. The department that I work in, for example, is moving the contents of several web application servers onto one new, larger server running VMWare.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
IE does not run on .NET.
This isn't much different than any other modern OS. They all have strict separation of user/kernel code and libaries at a given point. OS X and Windows both have clearly defined subsystems (Win32/Posix/.NET3?, Cocoa/BSD/etc.)
and let's see what you'd have if you ran VMware in Linux
- JavaScript running on some browser
- some browser running on Qt/Gtk and libc
- Qt/Gtk running on an X server
- X server and some browser running on libc
- libc running on some unixlike kernel
- some unixlike kernel running on VMware
- VMware running on libc, the kernel, and Gtk
- Gtk running on an X server
- X server running on libc
- libc running on some unixlike kernel
- some unixlike kernel running on real hardware
The workstation version of vmware is great for all kinds of things. I use it when setting up my portable apps on my USB drive (I don't use windows, regularly, but want to have some tools with me when on somebody else's computer, so I set up VMWare with winxp).
Take a snapshot, do an install. Tweak to make portable. Revert the snapshot to pre-install. See if the app works from the USB drive (which is actually mounted under linux, and shared to the vmware session).
Thing is, it doesn't prevent phishing, stealing sensitive info or any of this. Even if you try and keep everything important out of the virtual machine, you still have to type out your e-banking login in there, to login to your e-banking.
Bottom line, it makes reverting after a disaster easier. Which is easy enough on the real machine if you are doing full & regular incremental backups with a program like Acronis True Image.
Virtual machine has its uses, but it's not a layer of security, just the good old "divide and conquer" principle, as if you had a dedicated web browsing machine.
Oops - I didn't realize Vista wasn't supported yet and I've been running it for a few weeks in VMWare Fusion for OSX. It runs great (MBP C2D) and is much faster than the -XP line. I've only got 512MB allocated to it too.
VMWare Fusion would be just about perfect if they added support for adding block devices from files like on linux. Hopefully in the next beta.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You could have also done a snapshot prior to the update. Then it barfs. No problem, revert the snapshot.
Yes... up to DirectX 8 at least, apparently they'll be working on newer versions of DirectX later.
You don't fail over the virtual machines. You fail over the hardware and migrate the virtual machines. Of course it is not "that easy" and there are lots of things that need to be in place for it to work. Any level of service guarantee that you are able to achieve with services on physical machines you can achieve with virtual machines. Virtualization does have the advantage that you can use your hot spare for other things.
Consider the simple case of a webserver with a database backend. For various reasons you would run these services on separate hardware so you need two computers. To support HA you need double the number of computers for a total of 4. With virtualization you can get away with only two physical computers. If one physical computer fails you move its virtual machine to the other physical computer. Now of course the performance is going to suck while both services are running on the same hardware, but sucky service beats no service.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
As an end-user--yeah, I agree totally As a developer, it's invaluable. As more people buying computers are being defaulted to Vista we need to ensure compatibility. We've got a dedicated Vista-box used just for testing--but a VM provides an easily resettable environment to try all tests in all combinations. The nicest thing that I've seen with VMWare 6 is that you can run VS2005 in XP, run it's solution within a Vista VM and still debug from the IDE (running on the host-OS). The alternative to this would be running VS2005 directly in Vista (which is known to be a nightmare to do). Anyways, THE SINGLE biggest feature of VMWare 6 that I'm enjoying is multiple-monitor support. Visual Studio 2005 is incredibly unstable and degrades with time. This means I'll build a base-image to develop on, and when performance drags and bugs creep in I'll just rollback.