i (obviously) know nothing about virtual servers, but we just set up a vmware server at work and it seems like a fairly easy thing to learn, and pretty useful...anyone know of any good tutorial sites? suggestions of where to start? a couple sites i noted are

http://www.vmware.com/
http://myslax.bonsonno.org/
http://www.rpath.com/

1/5/2007 7:56:23 PM

I use VMWare for all sorts of testing, not for production use servers though.

is there really any difference in setting up a virtual server vs. setting up an actual server on real hardware? what do you want to run on it?

1/5/2007 9:16:27 PM

well, we bought one (well, i didn't buy it, obviously) so that they could use the computer as an actual computer, and run a vmware linux server on it for outside access to a web database

1/5/2007 9:41:29 PM

something about that description strikes me as dreadfully misguided

1/6/2007 3:27:59 PM

it may very well be...i could also not quite understand how they're using it...my knowledge of virtual servers is extremely limited

1/6/2007 4:07:08 PM

the part that frightens me is the "actual computer" bit -- please tell me you don't mean "an employee workstation" when you say "actual computer"

1/6/2007 9:13:02 PM

virtual servers are an AMAZING way to save businesses money. most servers out there today only ride at like 15% utilization over the day... tell a customer you can virtualize things and reduce their hardware (maintenance) and data center bills by 2/3 and they'll be happy indeed.

in addition, you can setup clusters... so rather than putting VMs on a box, you just put them on the cluster and VMWare works out where it actually resides on the hardware. this adds MUCH more resiliency. say you have a RAM bank go bad... login to the VM management console, move all the VMs off that physical server, take it down, replace the RAM, turn it back on, and it will redistribute automatically.

hell, you can even move a virtual server from one physical box to another and it will maintain an SSL connection across the physical move. how badass is that???

1/6/2007 9:23:59 PM

Let me point out this is VMWare Server ESX I'm talking about, not the version you can d/l for free from their website... The free version is pretty sweet for testing and stuff, but you can't cluster it.

1/6/2007 9:25:35 PM

you can get a free 30 day trial of VMWare ESX Server, and like you said, its badass.

VMWare Server (free) is pretty good, I personally use VMWare Workstation for the multi snapshot capability

1/6/2007 9:56:25 PM

of course at the point where you're running on hardware with memory mirroring you (should) also have memory hotswap and VMware's additional functionality is just icing on a cake that isn't even so tasty after you consider the overhead of virtualization

VMware was a lot more interesting before Xen could duplicate its functionality without M$ approval via Pacifica/Vanderpool extensions, now it's becoming little more than a crutch for underqualified IT staff to lean on until RHEL/SLES implement a GUI for Xen that your typical ITT graduate can handle

[Edited on January 7, 2007 at 1:52 AM. Reason : in my not so humble opinion ]

1/7/2007 1:51:19 AM

I use it for testing and studying and stuff - I'm training to become a network voice engineer, and it's pretty damn convenient to setup a server on VMWare on my laptop and drop Cisco CallManager (any or all version on different machines if I want) on it and start going through configs and stuff.

1/7/2007 6:39:56 PM

for testing it's the shit, no doubt, but as I see it it's no longer the most cost effective solution for production server virtualization.

sadly VMware's only just starting to gain acceptance (judging from the number of VMware certified hardware platforms appearing) even as cheaper alternatives are available, and I imagine it's going to be a few years still before the market accepts the alternatives

1/7/2007 7:07:31 PM

If your company is serious about virtualization, I would tell them to pony up the money to get you training and/or hire a consultant to migrate everything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vmware has a newsgroup listed on the bottom that may/may not be useful.

1/8/2007 3:45:14 AM

warning: don't do VMware testing on a production network. guessing it relates to the virtual switch shit which sounds highly suspicious considering the circumstances, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly what VMware does to accomplish the amazing feat of taking down an entire network of ~160 clients by simply being plugged in and turned on. two seperate occassions the source of network-wide connectivity problems was found to be the same VMware box. you can imagine it took quite a while, the first time, to come to the conclusion that it might fix the problem if we randomly unplug the VMware box

1/8/2007 7:55:12 AM

Virtual PC 2007 now available for free

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

2/19/2007 5:36:27 PM