Slashdot Mirror
VMware Workstation vs. VirtualBox vs. Parallels
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy takes an in-depth look at VMware Workstation 7, VirtualBox 3.1, and Parallels Desktop 4, three technologies at the heart of 'the biggest shake-up for desktop virtualization in years.' The shake-up, which sees Microsoft's once promising Virtual PC off in the Windows 7 XP Mode weeds, has put VirtualBox — among the best free open source software available for Windows — out front as a general-purpose VM, filling the void left by VMware's move to make Workstation more appealing to developers and admins. Meanwhile, Parallels finally offers a Desktop for Windows on par with its Mac product, as well as Workstation 4 Extreme, which delivers near native performance for graphics, disk, and network I/O. 'There's some genuine innovation going on, especially in the areas of hardware support and application compatibility,' Kennedy writes. 'All support 32- and 64-bit Windows and Linux hosts and guests, and all have added compelling new VM management capabilities, ranging from automated snapshots to live VM migration.'"
If cost is an issue why do these reviews forget the free VMWare Server it does most everything most users would need at no cost vs workstation
but crawled onto second place for being free. I think cost should be kept out of reviews, instead tell what you think of the product - as it is - then the reader can decide for himself if the price is worth the extras.
VirtualBox rules. XP on VMWare barely ran while the same Win XP install on VirtualBox is working well.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Whether it meets some arbitrary definition of "freedom" shouldn't affect its score. If "freedom" is a desirable feature for certain users, they can certainly weigh that appropriately themselves.
Oops I was wrong about the max number of processors, it really is 4, I just tried it.
If you actually bother to boot up and try VirtualBox you will find it very buggy compared to VMware...
Sorry, I have to disagree. I have many, many instances of VirtualBox running and I love it. I *have* had some issues, but only with some really far out edge cases. I find it to be very easy to use, and reliable. As a sysadmin, VBoxManage is awesome for scripting.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
I guess it depends on how you use it. For my purposes it is the entire point of my system. Im usually trying to cram a minimum of 16 VMs on each one and it does just fine for what I need it to do.
It is expensive... when compared to VMWare Player, which is free (as in beer) and also supports up to 4 virtual CPUs.
Of course, you can't create VM images with VMWare Player...
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
it works well with USB devices. I use it to program Lego Mindostorms, and for Midi (to USB) keyboard input and some thumb drives.
it will mount any folder on my mac disk either permenantly or temporarily (these show us as X: or Y: or whatever). What's mildly annoying is that this is 2 step process: first you tell the VM to "add the drive" then you have to use a windows "run" command "net use x: " to tell windows about it. the second step seems strange to me, but you only do it one time.
I've had three things I could not figure out.
I never was able to get a windows media player to mount in media player mode so I could use windows DRM protected WMA files on it and manage it from within windows media player 11. Instead it only will mount as a thumb drive.
I was not able to get a virtual CD device to mount an iso image or burn an iso image (as a work around for getting the WMA files in a format I could play).
It will not burn a CD or DVD.
also I never figured out how to add my Samsung C310 printer to it or my HP multifunction printer to it. it does see them, it just never finds the drivers. However I'm pretty certain this is a windows driver problem and nothing to do with the VM.
I don't game so open GL means squat to me.
"VMWare assumes the *entire* point of your system is to run VMWare"
Damned straight! Why else would I buy a machine with 8 cores and 32 Gb RAM?
"Try looking at the RPM"
What RPM? VMware Workstation 7 does not ship as an RPM any more. You are behind on the times.
"Contrast with VirtualBox"
Yes I did. They BOTH install lots of strange stuff on your machine. I did not see much difference.
The big difference I found is that VMware has sufficient quality for me to do my work. VirtualBox is so buggy that I cannot do my job with it. Believe me, I tried.
VirtualBox is also great for network labs as you can bind physical NICs to seperate virtual machines. You can't do that with any others until you start getting into ESX territory afaik.
As an example you can run Checkpoint or Olive on it and link it in with Dynamips, get an entire enterprise network running on your desktop. Maybe not everyones idea of fun but a comparable hardware lab setup would run to many thousands of pounds.
I'd second your comments about the Atom too, it runs XP blazingly fast.
I was under the impression that VMs couldn't be created with Player either, so I built one in Workstation at the office, copied it to a flash drive, took it home where I installed the newest version of Player, and copied the VM to that machine.
But in the process of playing around with VMware Player, I did see an option for creating new virtual machines. Didn't explore any further, but it seems the new version does support not just playing, but building.
Whoops, I lied. The latest version can create images now. I'm still not sure that it has 3D support, though.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
It was apparently added since the last version of VMWare Player that I used.
I noticed it in their FAQ after I posted.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I've had stuff I compiled from scratch also not work. Doesn't mean it's a bad product, could be you just forgot some esoteric parameter when you built it. VMWare is getting worse and worse.
VirtualBox is fine for what it is, but I don't have the time to struggle with it.
"some really far out edge cases" - welcome to my life.
But VMware is BETTER. And $189 approaches zero compared to the cost of the time I spend with it.
Just as an FYI: 3D acceleration is supported to a degree in Parallels, I play Counter-Strike 1.6 in in 1920x1080 using OpenGL mode on my Mac. It isn't perfect for all games, but it does work!
Maybe he should've spent a second or two checking up on this before he did his test.
Didn't RTFA, I see. It states that Parallels Desktop 5 is available, but only for Mac. I just checked out their website and I have to agree.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I use VirtualBox for building a test environment and it works very well. Also the graphics acceleration worked fine for the games that I tested with. Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme looks interesting, but the only "Certified hardware platform" is a HP Z800 Workstation, which costs $2000 to $5000. Add in $400 for the Parallels license and that gets to be a bit steep. Plus the announcer on the video sounds like he is trying to sell you a used car.
It works, its free, it supports multiple CPUs. Done.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
And better, how?
Just BETTER?
There are cases where VMWare may be preferable, but unless you're running 16 systems, I don't see how it's "BETTER" for general use.
VirtualBox is at least $189 less than any other product. That makes it 189 times "BETTER" than anything else, especially when you start in with the feature comparisons.
- Virtual CPU count
- OpenGL
- Manageability/portability
- Live migration/teleportation
- Scriptable backend
- Dead Simple Interface
BTW, what could you possibly be struggling with?
I was just going to read and mod.. Oh well. It's worth it.
It does have 3D support.
By the way, the release notes were very easy to find on Google - it was the second result when searching for VMware Player 3.
Wow. I see that they've stopped teaching good sentence and paragraph construction in college. Is it possible that this "paragraph" was cobbled together from several tweets?
XenDesktop is a thin client system that uses virtualization on the server, not on a desktop PC like the other products reviewed.
If you actually bother to boot up and try VirtualBox you will find it very buggy compared to VMware, to the point of being not very usable. I spent several days trying to get VirtualBox to work for me but there were just too many problems.
No you will not. Recent Virtualbox is very stable, I haven't seen a crash on Vbox version > 3.0.1 I use it in complex networking high peak load setups without issue. Only time I can bring it down is running high load in a nested hypervisor environment.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
This has been a feature of every VMware desktop release I've used, since before VirtualBox was around...
You are saying it yourself:
"There are cases where VMWare may be preferable"
My system is one of those cases.
I just flat out could not get VirtualBox to work correctly. I require a very complex network setup and their networking is not as robust as VMware.
My VMs are pushed out hard, running automated tests. I got occasional lock-ups in VirtualBox while VMware runs for days and days without a single problem.
For me, VirtualBox wins purely out of the fact that it's mostly open source and supports the largest amount of host OSs and runs on a few more that aren't "supported" officially. Finally, a virtual machine that works with FreeBSD as a host.
However, from a performance standpoint I can't tell the difference between VMware and VirtualBox, except perhaps that VirtualBox doesn't seem to hammer the host OS quite as hard.
For smaller scope tasks, there's nothing wrong with Virtual Box, but when you start running 50+ machines, you just need something like ESXi server. I've never used the web interface and don't plan to. We always use the Windows client.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Nonsense. Any decent boxed pre-loaded PC from a place like Best Buy or Costco is more than adequate for running this stuff.
Now there is the obvious problem of distinguishing between those of us that are trying to use VMs as a poor man's mainframe and those of us that aren't.
Since Parallels is in the comparison, this is obviously a review for desktop users.
OTOH: none of these products popped out of the ether just yesterday, so the idea
that you need a monster of a machine by modern standards just to run them decently
seems a little absurd really.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"$189 less than any other product. That makes it 189 times "BETTER""
I think you have some pretty serious issues with your math skills.
And you have no clue about costs.
The more expensive software product often makes for the lowest-cost system when you factor in the necessary hardware.
For example a $10,000 enterprise database is cheaper than a free one if it can do the same work on a $20,000 server that would require a $50,000 server for the free one.
Yes I do work with systems like that.
Just to point out that VirtualBox has support for 2D and 3D acceleration. I used to play "armadillo" there and (by also using AMD-V virtualization extension) it works great.
I also saw some friends using it to develop flash games using Adobe Flash CS3 and it was really smooth.
For me VirtualBox wins because it works on Windows 7 home premium. VMWare Server requires Professional.
I also like the interface better than VMWare's free server product which I was using on my old xp pro installation.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
VMware Player and VMware Server are available for free. Also, if you are going to judge VirtualBox as being X times better than some other product because of cost, VirtualBox would then be infinitely better than VMware Workstation. But it's clearly not infinitely better. Only the open source edition of VirtualBox is free for everyone; the non-open source (precompiled) version is only free for personal use and evaluation. VMware Player, Server, and ESXi are free for everyone.
VMware has better USB passthrough support, as I've discovered by trying both VMware Player and VirtualBox (the device worked only in VMware Player). VirtualBox's USB support isn't even included in the open source edition.
VMware has automatic printing support for guests, without the need to manually share the printer or install a driver on a guest.
For desktop products, VMware has Easy Install, which automatically performs an installation of supported guest operating systems and automatically installs the tools.
VMware has Aero support in Windows VIsta/7, which VirtualBox does not. VMware's Direct3D and OpenGL support is more advanced.
VMware VMs are portable between ESX, ESXi, Player, Fusion, Workstation, Server.
VMware Server is manageable via the web interface or the full VMware vSphere/Infrastructure client. VMware VMs can also be accessed via VNC, even with the free Player. (RDP support for VirtualBox is not in the open source version, either.)
VirtualBox's interface is rather confusing, especially compared to that of VMware Player or VMware Fusion.
I've used both for a couple years. If you don't need the ACE and Developer features of VMware, then Virtualbox is a fantastic substitute. Performance is roughly the same
on dual-core AMD 64-bit.
From a usability standpoint, it's been ahead of VMware for quite a while.
For example, you can send keystrokes to Virtualbox without trapping the keyboard output - the VBox window only has to have focus. Also, attaching virtual or physical disks
or images to VBox has long been simpler, but perhaps VMware has caught up.
And, i've found the VMware automatic installs to be a bit of a nuisance.
I guess I would still favor the VMware products for anything critical but, aside from that, I've been very pleased with Virtualbox for type 2 and Xenserver for type 1 hypervisors over
VMware Workstation and ESX.
What were you trying to setup that failed with VBox but worked with VMware?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
With version 2.0 (the version I have tried it with), you could just download a blank image from this site anyway:
http://vmcreator.com/virtual-machine.html
Probably not the easiest way to do things, but it works.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Linux's KVM module and the "Virtual Machince Manager" (VMM) app that uses it needs to be measured on here. The interface is simple and easy.
It has shiny features too:
- live OS migration.
- Tools like "Test Drive Ubuntu" can use it to give you one-click "Test your bug in a daily build VM".
- FOSS on FOSS (Linux, BSD, etc) no-latency driver requests being passed to the Host OS, meaning only 1 context switch per Virtual-Physical interrupt.
- It's contributers are all still in the business of improving it (unlike all those mentioned except Parallels)
- It's FOSS, has very little code, is the fastest growing
- Its modules can run code for other CPUs (good for the oncoming ARMs).
Hardware virtualization helps for Windows virtualization. Please measure programs that use it (other than with Virtualbox which doesn't cooperate).
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
It's too bad that no VM tool seems to support OS X as a guest. I'm sure it must be possible.
Wine has nothing to do with virtualization. It's a compatibility layer, nothing more.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When it comes to VM's I use for interactive work like running Win32 desktop apps or gaming, I prefer Parallels Desktop 5 on OS X. It even has WDDM drivers for Winblows. Very slick, integrates well with OS X and has good enough 3D performance to play some games.
When it comes to virtual servers, I use VirtualBox where scalability isn't a HUGE concern. I also use it extensively in the classroom since it's quite free and not hard for students to get ahold of and feel comfortable using it. The 3D performance is awful and it's not as fast as parallels but it's solid and a good workhorse.
If I were hosting 50 VM's, I'd probably go with VMWare ESX but their desktop offerings VMWare Workstation and VMWare Fusion (OSX) have failed to impress me much. Not saying they suck but Parallels 5 is noticeably faster, more stable (for both host and guest) and integrates better with the Host OS for desktop use.
All are good products but I prefer Parallels on OSX, VBox on everything else. If they develop a Windows/Linux version of Parallels 5 that is just as good, I'd probably buy it.
One interesting point though, why does VBox support for FreeBSD guests suck so horribly? You'd think a fairly open VM would have better support for open source guests. Parallels supports FreeBSD in a much better fashion.
None of these products are perfect, they all have problems.
These are complex products with many many features and I don't imagine there are many of us who use all of them.
Stuff that seems like a minor issue to one user is a total show-stopper to another.
Your success with a product means nothing to another user if they are using it differently or are attempting to use a different set of features.
Really the only answer is you have to try them for yourself and see how they work for you.
Fortunately even the pay-for products have a free evaluation period so you can try them out without shelling out the cash.
If you work with the product all day then the cost of purchase is pretty irrelevant compared to what you are doing with it. How much is your time worth?
Wine has nothing to do with virtualization.
False. Both are methods for running the software you want while still retaining the freedom to select an operating system.
It's a compatibility layer, nothing more.
False. It's a compatibility layer that might eliminate the need for you to use full-blown virtualization.
Yes, I am aware of the recursive acronym. I see it (and your comment) as exactly the kind of pendantry that is keeping many people from enjoying open source software. Fortunately I am able to see past it, and despite the name of the product, I am able to realize that Parallels and WINE can be used to meet the exact same needs.
"since all our desktop computers are very old and run XP "
"there's no money in the budget for that".
"nor can we afford $2000-5000 for a decent computer"
"causing many days' worth of lost time."
You clearly have big problems with the whole concept of what is cheap and what is expensive.
VMware Workstation has the "Virtual network editor" tool which does exactly that. It's been there since v6.0 if I remember correctly.
This has been a feature of every VMware desktop release I've used, since before VirtualBox was around
It's not as obvious how to do it on VMware Workstation, though.
You need to change one of the "virtual networks" to bridge to a specific adapter. In addition, on a Windows host you should disable all protocols but the "VMware Bridge protocol" from binding to that adapter. Then, you set the VM to use that virtual network.
I have my vCenter server running this way, because version 2.5 could run on a domain controller, and version 4 cannot. An install of workstation later, and vCenter is running with its own dedicated NIC.
It took very little time for me to discover that VMware has absolutely no colour management capability, which completely kills any chance you have of using Windows-based, colour-managed applications like Photoshop (unless you are intentionally not using a colour-managed workflow).
The color matrix/LUT itself must obviously be created and applied in the host OS (I use Argyll and an X-Rite i1 Display 2 all on Linux, which work great) but it's useless if the Windows application isn't aware of the display profile.
I did a bit of reading and it turned out VirtualBox does support hardware display profiles for Windows guests; the same afternoon I had a Windows XP VirtualBox guest running Photoshop CS3 with full colour management and has since been working great. Strongly recommend to other Linuxy designer-types finding themselves in a similar situation.
On a related note, if ever you do create a calibrated monitor profile using Argyll that you intend to use with Firefox, use a matrix type profile, not a LUT -- Firefox apparently does not support the more accurate LUT profiles at all, but matrix profiles work just fine. I use the LUT for the general display profile but point firefox explicitly to an alternate matrix profile so that photos containing embedded display profiles show up with gamma and especially saturation levels for my display.
VMware has Aero support in Windows VIsta/7, which VirtualBox does not. VMware's Direct3D and OpenGL support is more advanced.
Just thought I'd chime in on this. True VMWare will run aero. But it doesn't run it fast by any means at least in my experience on an E8400 Core2Duo running Ubuntu 9.10 as a host and Win7 guest. And VBox will run compiz in a Linux guest surprising well. Last I checked, VMWare didn't support compositing in a Linux guest. So, depending on what you're doing is what makes one better than the other in this regard.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I thought it was as simple as putting that NIC in bridge mode with the vNIC...
Performs fine for me using VMware Fusion and a Windows 7 guest.
What problems did you run into with Virtual Box? I found it to be simple to use.
1. Download software .iso image of OS
2. Run software
3. Define parameters of VM
4. Point virtual CD at
5. Install OS
Then it just works.
Virtual Box doesn't have drag and drop between guest and host. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...when it works. It doesn't have hardware accelerated 3D, and I've had trouble getting certain things working under a VM. For example, I had a little USB device that only works under Windows 98 -- it would be great if a VM could access that, though it'd also be dangerous unless done right (I don't want my VM talking to every USB device, just that one).
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"Any decent boxed pre-loaded PC from a place like Best Buy or Costco is more than adequate for running this stuff."
I guess that would depend.
You're not going to be able to run an automated test of a eight-machine database cluster on any kind of hardware available at Costco.
All these other solutions are very good, but if you have any ambitions of possible migrating boxes to a production environment you almost have to go with VMWare. While the licensing cost of an Enterprise kit is expensive, the features that you get such as High Avail/DRS/VMotion are absolutely a godsend for any system admin (plus the whitelisted hardware specs). I don't work for VMWare, but run a small business's IT and have been through the upgrade path from VMWare server to ESX server.
Sig it.
Yea its very nice. Supports 3D acceleration too. I play wow in a box while my main system is network isolated:) I recommend VMplayer to everyone who wants to mess with it.
Meh, this reviewer obviously doesn't use any of these systems professionally. Virtual box seems nice but it was only recently it support live migration. Its always been a "work in progress" from my point of view and I only really use it when I have a dd image of something I need to mess with. Not sure about Parallels though. I have heard of them but never really looked at them.
To be honest, however, VMware really needs to catch up. I bought 7 not for the extra features but because I had a lot of vmdk files with multiple path snapshots. Hell, its why I bought the 6 upgrade from 5.
Mind you, this is all on the workstation development side. Start talking server and VMware wins, hands down over all other technology's. But then, they are expensive enough to make people pause before they drop for a ESX license. Hell, went to the Parallels site for the first time, and that $999 price for a server license is very tempting.
Yeah, I would imagine it's possible that the codebase for fusion on OSX and workstation on Linux could account for the difference. Who knows.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Use it to run XP Piratebay Edition and Slackware 13, both mostly for experimenting on. The only problems I've found are the lack of a simple way to share files between them, the complete inability to install BSD due to cascading segfaults (which is weird since it'll practically run on a toaster), and the fact that I have to exit fullscreen and click outside the window to switch to another workspace in my host OS (Ubuntu). Other than those three things, I've found it pretty decent. An acquaintance of mine who is the stereotypical obsessed Mac fan swears by Parallels, and it does look nice, but the proprietary license and price tag put me right off.
Same here.. Have a quad core Dell server with 4GB of ram, running Ubuntu 8.04 server, with 3 Virtualbox VMs, two Windows 2003 server instances, and a 2008 instance. Since the system is headless, the command line VBoxHeadless utility is fantastic... Don't know where all these bugs the parent poster mentions are... I also use Virtualbox on my laptop to allow me to run several Linux distros under Windows7.. Been flawless for me!!
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Might I introduce you to http://www.easyvmx.com/ ? Online creator of blank vms, complete to the spec you choose. Pretty nifty and fast, even if you do have access to regular vmware creation.
The deal hasn't gone through yet.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
= games in VM
This one might but I imagine it would be slow as molasses lol
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11504534&whse=BC&Ne=5000000+4000000&eCat=BC|84&N=4017755%205000108&Mo=4&No=3&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&topnav=
I guess they didn't know that Parallels Desktop V4 was superseded; after all, they are only the tech media...
PS - I've used Parallels since V3 and I like it a lot...
some of my fellow employees were forced to use VMWare by the IT guys (they are the art department - on Macs) and it makes their systems go nuts - SPOD, crashing, S L O W performance, hard to modify, does not play well with the rest of the system...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
never mind... sorry!
Ask Me About... The 80's!
...like I said before: Most of us aren't trying to use this stuff as a poor man's mainframe.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Actually, take a look at the built-in linux KVM which is getting seriously competitive in some environments. If combined with an HA-NAS solution and some custom scripts it can get quite useful in large scale deployments (as long as you do not expect pretty GUI management tools). The only serious technical weakness versus VmWare ESX is at this point lack of VMotion (which is a bit of a solution looking for a problem in many real-life scenarios anyway, given that server failures where the VM still keeps running sufficiently to be spirited away alive to another host are as about as numerous as hen's teeth).
So if you are not into some performance-fiendish-disk-io-and-cpu situations (at which point you shouldn't be really virtualizing these porkers anyway) then KVM + HA-NAS might be the trick. KVM is also capable of reading vmdk files so you can cheat using the VMWare Converter just like you would with ESX hosts, just make sure not to install VMWare tools during conversion...
Search the net, people are doing wacky things with KVM already and soon the commercial guys will be fighting an uphill battle ... which is all for the better, IMHO.
If you actually bother to boot up and try VirtualBox you will find it very buggy compared to VMware, to the point of being not very usable.
You do realise that you are posting that VirtualBox is crap on /. don't you? Do you have a pecuniary interest in VMware? VirtualBox is brilliant and it performs usually flawlessly(some of the experimental stuff plays up but so what ?). Labeling it as buggy to the point of being unusable is an outrageous and untruthful thing to say.
I spent several days trying to get VirtualBox to work for me but there were just too many problems.
Shenanigans
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
We use VMWare ESX 3.5 heavily in my company, and the Virtual Infrastructure Client is a pain to install and run. .NET framework. It disconnects every now and then, and it doesn't try to reconnect automatically (this was fixed in VMWare 4).
The client is available only for Windows, and requires the
As I'm a Linux user (and my company is cool about letting me run Linux), there is no acceptable way for me to run the client.
Using wine is not an option because the console doesn't work.
Apparently one can use the console through the web interface, but this requires a firefox plugin which is dynamically linked to some archaic versions of libraries, so it doesn't work if your Linux installation is from the past 5 years.
With VMWare 4 the applet does load, but the console doesn't work anyway.
So then I tried installing VMWare Server edition just to run Windows and then the VMWare client, but the installation was trying to screw up my filesystem badly (disclaimer, I use a non-rpm based, relatively unknown Linux distro).
Finally I hit the nail on the head by running the VMWware client under Virtualbox.
As a result now I'm a happy Virtualbox and not-so-happy VMWare ESX user.
Actually, take a look at the built-in linux KVM which is getting seriously competitive in some environments. If combined with an HA-NAS solution and some custom scripts it can get quite useful in large scale deployments (as long as you do not expect pretty GUI management tools). The only serious technical weakness versus VmWare ESX is at this point lack of VMotion (which is a bit of a solution looking for a problem in many real-life scenarios anyway, given that server failures where the VM still keeps running sufficiently to be spirited away alive to another host are as about as numerous as hen's teeth).
Seriously? VMotion is a solution looking for a problem? I use VMotion ALL the time. Here's two simple scenarios. 1) Server updates such as BIOS patches, RAID controller firmware updates, etc. Or on the hardware side - adding a new NIC. VMotion all your servers off, and you can do these types of things without downtime. 2) DRS and DPM combined to increase resource availability (move guests that start consuming a lot of resources to a more idle server) and decrease power usage (move into a datacenter that offers metered power). The former lets me concentrate on sizing production servers and stop worrying about all the surprises from our development environments. The latter lets me shut down hardware that isn't being used without anybody noticing - to save on power consumption, which is both green and saves money. Oh and then there was the time we did a spinoff, and had an entire environment ready to go before the new SAN and new blades had even arrived. Between VMotion and Storage VMotion we just moved it all onto our new infrastructure once it was arrived, configured and burned in, and continued on our merry way.
What next, you can't think of a reason anyone would ever need SRM?
All of your scenarios make an implicit (and incorrect) assumption that all (or even most) companies deploying large VMWare setups expect their production servers to run 24/7. Vast majority of businesses operate 9-5 (or similar) hours and have no such requirement. And so in all of the cases you described the standard procedure is simply to shut down the VMs on a host in question and then simply restart them after upgrade or on another host. Then there is of course the fact that Windows VMs need to be regularly rebooted for various reasons, such as Microsoft updates, thus offering a lot of opportunities to perform scheduled host modifications.
VMotion is only useful in 24/7 operations where server downtime for scheduled maintenance is wholly unacceptable (and thus guest VMs cannot be Windows OS based ... or must be clustered and what not - which of course defeats the need for VMotion). There are very few such scenarios in real life, although a lot of corporate IT types like to pretend otherwise, I guess it somehow bolsters their egos or something, I not sure why, really. This and other kinds of what can only be described as "computer science masturbation" seems to be a very popular sport in over-funded IT shops.
All of your scenarios make an implicit (and incorrect) assumption that all (or even most) companies deploying large VMWare setups expect their production servers to run 24/7.
No, all of my scenarios make an implicit and correct assumption that I expect my production servers to run 24/7. Considering my industry (Healthcare) and some of the information coming in (diagnosis information from caregivers, to name one), that's an absolutely fair requirement. It's actually YOUR original assumption that it was a solution seeking a problem that implied that nobody needed this type of availability. Hey, here's another scenario. Before healthcare, I was working on Wall Street, for a HUGE bank on trading systems. Considering the sheer number of countries and time zones that were being traded, that to was a 24x7 requirement.
And so in all of the cases you described the standard procedure is simply to shut down the VMs on a host in question and then simply restart them after upgrade or on another host.
Ummm... no. Maybe for your firm, but that's just not the case.
VMotion is only useful in 24/7 operations where server downtime for scheduled maintenance is wholly unacceptable (and thus guest VMs cannot be Windows OS based ... or must be clustered and what not - which of course defeats the need for VMotion).
What? Nobody runs Windows in a 24x7 environment hoping to achieve 4 or 5 nines of uptime? Seriously, I'm the ONLY one? By the way, clustered apps are great, but doesn't Storage VMotion come in handy to say... upgrade a SAN without massive downtime? Or what about using VMotion to replace an entire blade chassis without downing 16 hosts and untold guests?
There are very few such scenarios in real life, although a lot of corporate IT types like to pretend otherwise, I guess it somehow bolsters their egos or something, I not sure why, really.
I'm not much for pretending anything when it comes to whether or not my business needs to be 24x7. From our board on down it's been told to me that it's a requirement for some (but not all) of our services. It's also an expectation of our caregivers, and in turn our patients. I don't do it for fun. Oh well, at least your username fits. There's a lot of other scenarios where a business should be 24x7, even if a life isn't at stake. Or should Google shut down at the whim of their engineers?
Your own statement that the "Vast majority of businesses operate 9-5 (or similar) hours and have no such requirement" kinda proves my point. That some (even if a vast minority) *DO* have such a requirement. And MANY of the rest have loftier goals than 9x5 uptime. Of course VMware is not for EVERY situation, especially in it's Enterprise Plus with SRM bolted on top incarnation. But it's reinvented the way many of us keep things online that need to be. Oh, and like it or not, DRS/DPM have reinvented the way some of us provide better performance and reduced power consumption.
Which of course can be achieved by taking offline and upgrading individual SANs in the redundant storage cluster and then re-syncing them back. I assume you are using redundant SAN arrays, having been on this self-professed bleeding edge of hyper-super-critical everything.
LOL. Some mission critical setup you got there! All this pontificating ... and then you have a massive single-point failure spot like a chassis holding 16 hosts! It just figures. All shiny V-motion-this and V-motion-that toys and no design forethought whatsoever.
You business and businesses like it constitute a tiny fraction of all businesses out there. And from what you described you are also a typical example of "commerce-based" ideology of simply throwing more and more hardware resources and money at the problem, in ever more convoluted contortions, so that your poorly fit, awfully inadequate OS and application combinations can be made to creek and wobble on hordes of VMs and armies of ill-fitting hosts to some sort of state of illusion of semi-reliability.
Nice try, but truly robust systems like Google do not use virtualization in a way even remotely similar to yours, instead using custom close-to-the-OS cluster configurations written from the ground up for this purpose. They are in fact the very anathema of what you are doing.
Oh there is no doubt that there is market for all that nonsense, like there is also robust market for penis extensions, but this alone does not in any way have any bearing on the point I was making. VMotion is a solution looking for a problem precisely because if you do truly need VMotion, it is a sure fire indicator of you having screwed the pooch royally when it came to overall design of your fault tolerant systems.
VMotion and Storage VMotion are needed in a well designed setup like a pair of boils on one's buttocks. VMotion, and particularly automated performance based VMotion encourage throwing lazilly and incoherently mis-matched VMs at bunches of inadequate hosts only to see the VMs hopping about the hosts like a bunch of deranged rabbits instead of having them stay put in a well estimated and adequate hosts. All Storage VMotion does is to encourage lazy, resource consuming activities like shuffling contents of multi-terabyte arrays back and forth for no good reason whatsoever, while at the same time hiding serious shortcomings in storage and host points of failure.
Which of course can be achieved by taking offline and upgrading individual SANs in the redundant storage cluster and then re-syncing them back. I assume you are using redundant SAN arrays, having been on this self-professed bleeding edge of hyper-super-critical everything.
Depends on the application. For some lesser ones, no, one SAN in a primary, one mirrored in a backup. Some downtime would be acceptable, but we'd prefer not to. Since some of these apps have some failover time (takes about an hour), we'd rather not have to, but can temporarily piggyback off another SAN. In reality, this hasn't really been needed yet, since all of our stuff is either strong enough to upgrade online, or nearline for backups and easily brought down. But strange, you went from saying it was never needed, to just arguing against my setup, knowing about 1% or less of how our actual infrastructure is designed.
LOL. Some mission critical setup you got there! All this pontificating ... and then you have a massive single-point failure spot like a chassis holding 16 hosts! It just figures. All shiny V-motion-this and V-motion-that toys and no design forethought whatsoever.
I suppose if ALL we had was one blade chassis, you might be right. You see, we have many, many, many servers. Multiple chassis, and by the way, most of our infrastructure is not blade based. But again, you went from arguing against any need for 24x7 or VMotion into trying to pick apart someone's infrastructure while not knowing anything about it.
Nice try, but truly robust systems like Google do not use virtualization in a way even remotely similar to yours, instead using custom close-to-the-OS cluster configurations written from the ground up for this purpose. They are in fact the very anathema of what you are doing.
True, which is why it was an example of a business that chooses to need to be 24x7, not a selling point for VMware. I'll let VMware sell their stuff.
Oh there is no doubt that there is market for all that nonsense, like there is also robust market for penis extensions, but this alone does not in any way have any bearing on the point I was making. VMotion is a solution looking for a problem precisely because if you do truly need VMotion, it is a sure fire indicator of you having screwed the pooch royally when it came to overall design of your fault tolerant systems. VMotion and Storage VMotion are needed in a well designed setup like a pair of boils on one's buttocks. VMotion, and particularly automated performance based VMotion encourage throwing lazilly and incoherently mis-matched VMs at bunches of inadequate hosts only to see the VMs hopping about the hosts like a bunch of deranged rabbits instead of having them stay put in a well estimated and adequate hosts. All Storage VMotion does is to encourage lazy, resource consuming activities like shuffling contents of multi-terabyte arrays back and forth for no good reason whatsoever, while at the same time hiding serious shortcomings in storage and host points of failure.
Yeah, that's it. Sure thing pal. You are clearly, 100% right, and like most arguments, of course it's black or white. VMotion is horrible, all engineers that incorporate it into their plan are incompetent, and there's always a better way. PS: Even when there is a better way, sometimes the budget precludes that option. Other times, it's just a good way to go. But keep assuming you understand everybody's environment and are smarter than all of us.
No, I simply went from saying it was never needed to pointing out how your perceived "need" is actually a result of shortcomings of the design you were hinting at.
Which are running on hosts apparently designed to sometimes fail in packs of 16 ...
No, again, I simply pointed out that your perceived need for a VMotion-based "solution" is in fact the result of poor overall design, design which you were hinting at yourself.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with who is "smarter", but it has everything to do with robust designs of fault-tolerant systems. If you are truly going to go full-tilt fault-tolerant, it is a very difficult undertaking to accomplish, but irrespective of your choices along the way the end result of any good design is inevitably lack of any need for superfluous hacks like VMotion to be part of the scenario. Sure you can use it, like people also can create software out of a spaghetti of numerically labelled branching instructions ... but it does not make me "smarter" then everyone else to point out that doing so would be a rather dumb idea in the long run. It is simply a logical fact.
Yet you appear to take such obvious truths as a personal attack and so you seek to counter-attack with ever increasing ferocity every time you feel you need to defend your choices, which of course soon leads you to such emotionally-motivated, rash outbursts as the ones above, seeking to so desperately to prove yourself beyond reproach that in the end it has the opposite effect of creating an impression of rather dubious competence and woefully inadequate fault-tolerance of the designs you describe. Which in turn prompts me to levity at your expense...
No, I simply went from saying it was never needed to pointing out how your perceived "need" is actually a result of shortcomings of the design you were hinting at.
I'm sorry you think you have the smallest bit of insight into our infrastructure, the data centers they are in, the hardware and software configurations, the software we design as well as the packaged bits we use based on a couple of Slashdot postings. I'm not hinting at any design. It's neither on topic, nor brief enough to fit in a reply.
Which are running on hosts apparently designed to sometimes fail in packs of 16 ...
Interestingly enough, that's not true. I'm not sure how intimate you are with the latest gen of blade chassis, but I do know you're not intimately aware of how we use them as a small subset of our infrastructure. That said, there are certain applications in play that benefit greatly from the technology, especially our reduced maintenance and repair cost, and reduced power bill. Last I checked, our most important stuff doesn't sit there, since the latest blade chassis have "no single point of failure", but actually still have a couple, vendor claims aside. But keep on thinking whatever you think, yes, there is a place for blades in the enterprise.
No, again, I simply pointed out that your perceived need for a VMotion-based "solution" is in fact the result of poor overall design, design which you were hinting at yourself.
We're quite pleased with several aspects of our VMware deployments. Not all these apply to every thing we've virtualized, but we've enjoyed consolidation, power reduction, increased per-server utilization, easier hardware maintenance, easier migrations and upgrades, more flexibility on the desktop than our old, old Metaframe system, oh and incidentally, we actually have some clustered apps residing within ESX hosts, since one is not mutually exclusive to the other.
Sorry, life isn't blanket black and white. Sometimes we use thin provisioning for storage. Sometimes we don't. Some apps run on SATA. Some run on FC. Some run on SAS, and soon I predict we'll move a little bit towards flash. Some of our stuff is Enterprise Plus licensed. A few of our things run on free ESXi. We have a few Xen boxes mostly because the apps on them work, aren't too important, and we haven't bothered to do much more than watch them run. We have a couple of really small branch locations that run Hyper-V, because that's what worked best for that particular location.
But hey, if you can do better, you should send in a resume. Assuming you aren't always arrogant, we always are looking for good engineers. Just don't be that guy who comes in and can redo everything today the way it should be. That always works out great, right?
This is somewhat of a cop out. If true, all Slashdot conversations could be reduced to "you have no idea of Our Great Mysterious Cosmic Unknowable Infrastructure, even if I mention some bit of it explicitly, and you actually refer only to those because .... because .... its just Too Cosmic ... and Too Unknowable! Too Mysterious For You too! Why, it is so Mysterious and Unknowable that I myself have no clue what's what! Ha! Gotcha! So there!"
LOL. Enough to know not to trust the vendor fanfare about "fault-tolerant" back-planes as far as I can throw it, anyhow. Too many fried blade backplanes locking all blades despite being supposedly "fault tolerant". Same goes for "fault-tolerant" SANs which nuke all data on their disks when one of the supposedly "redundant" controllers or buses goes kaboom, RAID arrays that lose all their crap when the one of the "redundant" RAID5+1 controllers goes to meet its maker, etc and so on. But it all looks sooo seriously cool on the glossy brochures! All those colourful diagrams!
Oh dear, next I am gonna hear that you went away from Terminal Services into one of those insane Dell / Citrix blade-based individual Virtual Desktop environments ... if so, I can only admire your gluttony for punishment via convoluted-complexity-for-complexity's-sake. But then again, its your own personal Hell to run. If what I suspect is true, its no wonder that you sing praises of VMotion, it quite fits into that mess, in a sad kind of way.
Thanks for the offer but I am looking very closely into retirement these days and the only reason I am not posting this from a boat is that I can't seem to shake the clients I still have off. Something about the track record...
I use vmware mostly at work, cause well...it's kind of the industry standard these days. But for home use, I turn to virtualbox, I run a number of VM's at home and it works just great. Virtualbox was notably behind vmware a few cycles ago (say 1.x and 2.x), but all my "problems" were resolved in later versions, and now it's a real joy to use virtualbox. Usability wise it certainly get's a 10/10 from me, easy as can be. I am however still looking to make the move to KVM for home use, but the tools aren't up to the task yet in my opinion. So for now, virtualbox is a definate win!
The difference is that the other features you listed (3D, speed, administration) are features of the software, while the "freeness" is a characteristic of the folks producing the software. If I go to read a review of a bunch of new car models to try to determine what to buy, I wouldn't expect the characteristics of the car company to be included in the review scores, unless it's relevant to the job the car is supposed to be doing.
So what are the differences between the (free) player and the (not free) workstation?
One major thing, no snapshots in the player. Showstopper for me.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.