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VMWare Rolls Out Vista Virtualization

Posted by Zonk on from the i-virtually-am-excited-by-this dept.

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."

41 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems by tibike77 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm fairly sure it's not entirely VMWare's fault ;)

      --
      By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
    2. Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Two points about your post:

      1) this is the commercial version of VMware.

      2) the beta versions of VMware WS 6 had debug code active that slowed down the guest VM. try the final release of VMware WS 6, and you'll find there are no longer any performance issues that are VMware's fault.

  2. Just three million? by Werrismys · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I bet that figure is far too low.
    Everyone uses virtualization now.
    Half the servers are virtualized.

    Where I work some laptops are fitted with virtualized DOS/Win98 environments for very old software (to control old EPROM burners etc). Much easier to roll out a working VM environment and just copy it around than fiddling with constantly changing hardware.

    --
    'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
    1. Re:Just three million? by SQLGuru · · Score: 5, Informative

      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

    2. Re:Just three million? by charlesnw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree. Virtulization is penetrating every aspect of computing from servers to desktops. I wouldn't be surprised to see it in limited form on mobile devices. I would say 90% of companies are using virtulization (in production/dev/qa) and the remaining 10% are using it in dev/qa, or at the very least have a plan to implement it. The hardware/power/cooling cost savings and reduction in management overhead are to great to ignore by even the smallest shops.

      --
      Charles Wyble System Engineer
    3. Re:Just three million? by suv4x4 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  3. Maybe I'm missing something here... by Mikachu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...but didn't Vista's TOS specifically ban using Vista under a virtual machine?

    1. Re:Maybe I'm missing something here... by Bearhouse · · Score: 4, Informative

      Depends on the version - you need to buy the most expensive one in order to be allowed to virtualise. Big surprise, huh?

    2. Re:Maybe I'm missing something here... by gstoddart · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Depends on the version - you need to buy the most expensive one in order to be allowed to virtualise. Big surprise, huh?

      Can the OS even tell it's being virtualized?

      This seems about as enforceable as saying "you're not allowed to have a screen background with boobies in it".

      I can envision a lot of people saying fsck them and doing it anyway.

      Cheers
      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:Maybe I'm missing something here... by julesh · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No. In fact, some versions of Vista explicitly allow you to run them under both a virtual and non-virtual machine at the same time (i.e., they're not restricted to only one copy in memory at once). This unrestriction wasn't applied to all versions, which led some people reading the EULA to believe that MS were preventing you running those versions of vista under a virtual machine, but if you read the T&C the right way (which is how a court would read it -- standard terms like this are supposed to be read in the way most favourable to the consumer) you're allowed to, as long as you don't also use the same copy on a real machine.

    4. Re:Maybe I'm missing something here... by Bearhouse · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    5. Re:Maybe I'm missing something here... by suv4x4 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Depends on the version - you need to buy the most expensive one in order to be allowed to virtualise. Big surprise, huh?

      Right, windows sucks, and so on! What about OSX, which version do I buy to virtualize that?

  4. 64 bit support by danglingparticiple · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

  5. Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals? by anoopjohn · · Score: 4, Interesting
    First it was dumb terminals and super-duper-server and then it was good pcs and now we are going back to super duper virtual machines and just dumb terminals

    Multiple monitor display: Users can configure one virtual machine to span multiple monitors or multiple virtual machines to each display on separate monitors with this industry-first capability, enhancing desktop productivity. Only thing left is for it to support multiple keyboards and mice to take us back to that.
    --
    "Be the change you wish to see in the world" - M. K. Gandhi
    1. Re:Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals? by plasticsquirrel · · Score: 2, Informative

      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
  6. Pfft. Easy. by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 5, Funny

    All you need to do to emulate the Vista experience is a sharp stick and your own eye.

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
  7. I *heart* VMware by TheLazySci-FiAuthor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is welcome news. Let me tell you, virtualization has saved my ass many times, and growing (especially when it's windows).

    Example: A system fails to come back up after update and gives me my favorite hal.dll error. Since the hardware abstraction layer is different for nearly every machine, simply grabbing the hal.dll from another machine is not possible.

    Now there are several strategies to tackle this problem, for this instance however, because this was a virtual machine living with several other guest OSes which are all running on identical virtual hardware I simply ran a compare between the system32 drives of the borked windows and a working one - found several HUNDRED missing files (how did that happen, who knows), mounted the borked vmdk as the g: drive and copied the good files over to it.

    unmounted and rebooted to fully operational status.

    --
    Read my Very Short "Stories"
    1. Re:I *heart* VMware by Mistah+Blue · · Score: 2, Informative

      You could have also done a snapshot prior to the update. Then it barfs. No problem, revert the snapshot.

  8. Warning: Vista EULA Restrictions by giafly · · Score: 4, Informative

    With the release of Vista, Microsoft has reworded its End User Licence Agreement (EULA) to forbid the use of Vista Home Basic and Home Premium Editions with virtualisation products like Parallels and VMware. Macworld has confirmed the information with a Microsoft spokesperson. - Reseller News

    the EULA restricts virtualisation deployments to the Business and Ultimate edition of Vista - PC Pro
    --
    Reduce, reuse, cycle
  9. Didn't it work before? by BestNicksRTaken · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought all that was preventing you from running Vista under VMWare was Microsoft's licensing, i.e. you had to buy the uber-expensive ultra-mega-pro-corp-enterprise-unlimited version, and not the crappy home version dell gives you.

    I know Vista Home can run VMWare Server as a host (tried it) and Parallels on the Mac can run the MSDN version as a guest (seen it).

    So what's the news? Is it really just that Workstation 6 has come out of beta?

    --
    #include <sig.h>
  10. I'm using a sys w/ several times Vista's req's by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  11. Re:Pfft. Easy. by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Funny

    that's almost right, but to really nail dah feelin' you'd pay someone else for the eye poke with the sharp stick

  12. Re:Free Vistas for one and all by SScorpio · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/11/30/ie6-an d-ie7-running-on-a-single-machine.aspx

  13. Is this a thinly disguised press release by jimicus · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  14. Great by HeavensBlade23 · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...now Vista can virtually suck, too.

  15. Re:For VMware Beginners: VMware Howto by EvilMonkeySlayer · · Score: 2, Informative

    What is this, digg?

    Post the actual link rather than your (or someone elses) blog in hopes of getting ad revenue.

  16. Re:Network in a box by legoburner · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am just posting to try and get the general /. attitude towards Xen... Xen seems to be the fastest virtualisation option by quite a margin, and has excellent features (pci device forwarding anyone?), but will never be in the official linux kernel by the developer's own admission.

    Xen has a number of unfriendly (minor) glitches. It is locked in to specific kernel versions unless you really want to have a lack of stability. On the Xen mailing list developers have stated it is not suitable for enterprise use yet.

    I was wondering if people are feeling positive about the future of Xen in general? There is still an active developer community (perhaps equivalent in size to mythtv a year or two ago), but will Xen be beaten back by the rapid advance of other technologies, or are the benefits from Xen enough to keep it rolling forwards regardless of alternative virtualisation products?

    FWIW, I have 9 Xen virtual systems running on one core 2 duo server (3GB ram) now, and will be pushing that up to about 12 systems as a 'network-in-a-box' solution to a lot of my coding and home network requirements too and I am generally a big fan. I prefer vmware by a long margin for ease of use, but in terms of raw power Xen seems to have vmware beaten by quite a margin (and the PCI passthrough is very very useful for a print server and for playing with network cards). I think Xen will obviously continue to grow but I cant help but wonder if it will fall too far behind a few years from now.

    --
    Warhammer forums
  17. 3d acceleration by Ender77 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  18. Is there a reason to want to do that? by norminator · · Score: 2

    Isn't most of the point of running Vista (as opposed to XP) that you'd have DirectX 10, Media Center, and Aero? Given the hardware requirements of Vista, I seriously doubt you'd be getting any good gaming or media experiences in a Virtual Machine.

    1. Re:Is there a reason to want to do that? by Yoooder · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

  19. Parallels by Necrotica · · Score: 2, Interesting

    After using Parallels for Mac, VMware has a lot of catching up to do. Coherence mode, the ability to run virtualized applications seamlessly on the Mac desktop, is a beautiful feature.

    If the Linux version of VMware offers something similar, I'd be very interested.

    1. Re:Parallels by shadester · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you can't see the difference between OSX UI and a windows UI, then it might be a problem. Myself, I like the feature. For example to use Outlook Web Access on IE instead of safari or camino makes a big difference. Then I can have a windows IE among the other regular windows I usually have open. Really sweet.

  20. cpu frequency problems by yamla · · Score: 2, Interesting

    VMWare Workstation 5 had a problem when the host operating system changed the CPU frequency. This made the guest operating system clock go wacky and the guest itself almost unusable because letters I'd type would be repeated when the operating system thought I had held down a key for a second or two. The official workaround was to disable frequency scaling on the host operating system which is really not acceptable.

    Can anyone tell me if they fixed this issue in 6?

    --

    Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
  21. Re:The problem is Vista's excessive layering. by nxtw · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  22. Works great in VMWare Fusion for Mac by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Informative

    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)
  23. Re:3D Desktop? by Jellybob · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes... up to DirectX 8 at least, apparently they'll be working on newer versions of DirectX later.

  24. Re:Network in a box by Bishop · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  25. Re:3D Desktop? by SEMW · · Score: 3, Informative

    Have they implemented 3D harware acceleration virtualization? I don't see a lot of point in virtualizing Vista if you can't have the 3D desktop stuff. Yes... up to DirectX 8 at least, apparently they'll be working on newer versions of DirectX later. ..So that would be a no, then. Vista's eye-candy requires DirectX 9 -- specifically, I believe it uses Shader Model 2.0 to do all the fancy blurry frosted glass effects, which was bought in with DX9.
    --
    What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
  26. Gartner is very wrong by janap · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "the analyst group Gartner predicts that three million virtual machines will be in use by 2009, up from today's 500,000"

    Our small company alone will have rolled out more than 5000 virtual machines by that time, which would account for 1/500 of the volume increase. Not very likely. We replace the hardware of old legacy client systems running OS/2, put the OS/2 system inside a Xen VM, and add another VM running Linux which is our migration target. Very sweet.

    There will be a lot more virtual machines by that time. A lot. In all likelihood as many as a hundred times more.

  27. Re:Network in a box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm my opinion KVM will flush Xen away... But it will take some time.

    The free and open Xen is super-slow for anything I/O related when running hardware-virtualized systems (eg Windows or unmodified Linux). Super-slow as in network and disk I/O is basically unusable for anything but single-user desktop use. It's actually so slow that VMWare's VMplayer under Linux that is *not* using hardware-virt is faster than Xen's hardware-virtualization, on the same hardware (pathetic, but true... I've tested it with a ten users Windows 2003 Server tested both under Xen 3.0.4 then under VMplayer).

    The bad news: the drivers that makes hardware-virtualized guest I/O not-suck are closed-source and $$$.

    The good news? For para-virtualization Xen rocks. Bad news: only modified OSes run as para-virt guests. I've got my SVN / Samba / Squid / NFS servers running as Xen para-virtualized guests. Rock stable and super fast.

    PCI device forwarding is nice but AFAIK it only works for para-virtualized guests: in other words, you're not forwarding that super-fast GFX card to your Windows guest, which is stuck with a lame emulated (by QEMU) videocard.

    Here's a summary from a few months ago as to why KVM beats Xen easily, and I completely agree with the article. KVM is a little bit new but I expect to switch to KVM very soon. It simply has to many advantages over Xen.

    http://udrepper.livejournal.com/15795.html

    Simply put: Xen is driven by XenSource and they're out to try to make a buck. They're not playing nice with the community. Their developers base is shrinking and shrinking, with already quite some transfugees that went to KVM. Also there are some big-Linux-kernel-developers-names behind KVM. The XenSource guys are fighting a battle lost in advance for the "hardware-virtualization" side for sure. For para-virt I don't know. There are so many drawbacks with Xen and hardware-virt CPUs will just keep getting better and better at doing hardware-virt (hence minimizing the difference between para-virt and hardware-virt).

    KVM made it into the Linux kernel. It's not easy to beat that. Technically Xen isn't "linux only" (it runs on Solaris too, for example) but, still, I don't see Xen as a viable alternative for long. (and this is coming from a huge Xen fan: as I told you, I've got several servers running as Xen VMs).