Who's using what? I've been using Windows Virtual PC in Win7 and used Virtual PC 2007 before this and have had ok experiences with it. Should I bother playing with VMWare or Virtualbox?

9/9/2009 11:09:41 AM

I've only used VMWware installed on Windows 2003 server. I never had any issues. Can't comment on Virtual PC. But can't complain about VMWare.

9/9/2009 11:15:20 AM

i'm using vmware on server 2008.. no issues whatsoever. actually the Exchange server for work is running that way and it's been up for several months now without any issues

9/9/2009 11:33:22 AM

Hyper-V on 2k8R2

9/9/2009 12:24:12 PM

been happy with using Virtualbox for day-to-day stuff.

9/9/2009 1:59:58 PM

Havnt used Virtual PC. I love Vmware. Have used both server1 and 2, and currently using workstation 6.5 and I love it. I run several servers on my desktop constantly and it works great. Also quick and easy for me to pull up a spare OS for programming tasks when I need it or to just fool around on.

I migrated to Win 7 this weekend, no issues with any of it on there as well.

9/9/2009 2:45:23 PM

Let me ask the obvious ... what are your requirements? What are you planning on using the Virtual Machines for? Also, you are looking for cheap as in free, or, something to scale for an entire infrastructure?

9/9/2009 3:37:57 PM

for me, just to play around with at home. a couple staging server OSes for my development and to install beta software (looking at you visual studio 2010) etc. also, to be somewhat familiar with the various technologies in case it becomes important to know at work or something.


ok, here's a question. for those of you using vmware, are you using workstation or player? if you're just using player, what are you doing to create virtual machines? master_yoda, did you pay for workstation yourself or do you work for somewhere that uses/pays for it?

[Edited on September 9, 2009 at 4:04 PM. Reason : .]

9/9/2009 3:51:39 PM

Server as you know is free. I used it for a long time before I got a copy of workstation. Both work about the same and look/function as well.

qntmfred, you do a lot of what i do plus server hosting. I really think you would like vmware.

9/9/2009 5:04:38 PM

i use xen for production server virtualization / hosting. virtualbox for just dev, testing, general messing around on my PC. vmware works well too but virtualbox just seemed a little snappier and lightweight compared to running vmware on my pc.

9/9/2009 5:15:03 PM

i'm a vmware guy all the way. i have the most experience with ESX/vSphere/etc., but i've played around with GSX and Fusion.

instead of hosting this on your desktop, i'd personally throw ESXi onto a dedicated box and run VMs on there - that's what i do at home. you can manage it with the vSphere client.

ESXi is an incredible product to be free. all of the core functionality of ESX is there (but you don't get vmotion/HA/DRS/etc... which you wouldn't need anyway).

9/9/2009 5:24:28 PM

^if you're using a dedicated box, try out Windows Server 2008 R2

Turn on Hyper-V and go.

9/9/2009 8:10:17 PM

^ /me makes a note to get a standalone box and try that. Ive been meaning to but dont have any free and operational boxes right now.

9/9/2009 8:43:49 PM

With Win7 and supposedly 2008 R2 (I've only tried with 7) you can native boot from VHD too

Makes doing metal-up testing a lot easier when you don't have to worry about wiping partitions all the time.

9/9/2009 8:53:19 PM

Quote :

"instead of hosting this on your desktop, i'd personally throw ESXi onto a dedicated box "

i don't have a dedicated box


i was really close to doing the BootToVHD route, but decided i didn't know enough about sysprepping stuff and if i got stuck anywhere, i don't have the time to figure it out right now. just wanted to go ahead and get my dev environment up and going so i can get some work done. fortunately my win7 install didn't take forever like it did last time and i've got all my dev tools installed and a couple virtual pc VMs going now.

still gonna take a peek at vmware though. i can't imagine it having too many benefits above virtual pc though.

9/9/2009 9:26:47 PM

I manage/provision/store/whatever ~1000 VMs in solaris sparc zones, AIX wpars, ESX 3.5, vsphere 4, and have dabbled with vmware server (gsx) and xen(source). I'm looking to get more into KVM as that's the real future behind open source virtualization. I used virtual pc back in the day, but it's garbage. you should refrain from ever using it. even microsoft abandoned it for hyper-v.

[Edited on September 9, 2009 at 9:55 PM. Reason : played with esx-i for a while too but it wasn't very compatible with the hardware I had]

9/9/2009 9:54:57 PM

^no they didn't. Virtual PC is bundled with Windows 7.

9/9/2009 10:22:14 PM

that's not really true either (afaik). you have to download it separately at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

9/9/2009 10:25:21 PM

I use the shit out of some VMware


Server on my desktop bawx and laptop (actually I don't use VMs on it anymore, but when i did i used server)

and ESX running baremetal on my rackmount server


Server's UI switched at v2 to a SHITTY interface that is pretty fucking hard to understand at first


ESX is the shit, tho. Remote admin, superb performance. Would use again A+++ performance.

9/9/2009 10:32:23 PM

Quote :

"if you're using a dedicated box, try out Windows Server 2008 R2 Turn on Hyper-V and go."

why, exactly, would you run an entire server OS + hypervisor when you could just run the bare-metal 300MB-or-so ESXi and save resources for your VMs?

also, server 2k8 R2 = $$$ if you don't have MSDN/technet/etc.

9/9/2009 11:08:56 PM

Use the hell out of VMWare at work; both Linux and Windows hosts. Their API is actually kinda fun to play with too


I tried Virtual PC and it was ok, but I had more success with VMWare. I'm not sure if I gave them a real fair go though.

9/9/2009 11:29:47 PM

Quote :

"ok, here's a question. for those of you using vmware, are you using workstation or player? if you're just using player, what are you doing to create virtual machines? master_yoda, did you pay for workstation yourself or do you work for somewhere that uses/pays for it?"

LOVE VMWare

We currently run a single ESX server on a dedicated server, with about 7-8 virtual machines running on it, mostly Server 2003 with a couple XP workstations. The ONLY time we have to take the ESX down is for updates, which is once or twice a year. Shit's crazy reliable, which is good because most of the machines running on the ESX are in production. We have our Sharepoint web server on there and it gets HAMMERED, but from the user standpoint it's as fast (at least as fast as Sharepoint can be).

We run Server on our local workstations...mostly just use it to build servers/workstaions to deploy out to the ESX. However I know one guy who does all his development work in a Server 2003 machine hosted by VMWare Server on his Latitude D620...works great for him. He just moved the VM to a USB external for improved I/O (the only negative we've noticed from running VMs locally off your primary drive).

As far as creating goes, we normally just use VMWare converter...you can virturalize any machine with just a few clicks, and deploy it out to any ESX/Workstation/Server instance easily. It's really pretty beautiful...one minute you're wasting a perfectly useful Dell Poweredge 2950 (not using the CPU/HD space/whatever), a few moments later that machine is up and running somewhere else and you have a 2950 to do with as you want.

I usually use the VMWare Infrastructure Client to manage the ESX, VERY intuitive.

At some point we're planning on getting a SAN and another server to mirror the ESX for failover purposes, but for now what we have is working very well.

9/9/2009 11:55:24 PM

Quote :

"why, exactly, would you run an entire server OS + hypervisor when you could just run the bare-metal 300MB-or-so ESXi and save resources for your VMs? also, server 2k8 R2 = $$$ if you don't have MSDN/technet/etc"

300mb or so of what? Disk Space? Memory Footprint?

OOB, Win Server uses almost no resources. My VM server only has a single role installed: Hyper-V. It uses almost zero runtime resources. Of the 6gb of memory on the box, 5.5 of that is allocated to the VM's. Of the 1.16tb of disk space, all but 20gb is allocated to the VM's (and its only 20 because that was the default). Something like 99.5% of my CPU cycles go to the VM's (and it would be higher if I didn't do console logins to the box).

Can't argue the cost side, except to say that as soon as you need multi-machine environments, ESXi falls down, and you need to upgrade to VSphere. As soon as you hit that threshold, Hyper-V is insanely cheaper. An $800 2k8R2 license is equivalent to VSphere4 Enterprise at $3,600, and the Windows License allows for multi-core and multi-cpu use, VSphere charges $3,600 per physical processor, per machine.

But of course we are talking about desktop virtualization here

VPC is great on a client OS, ESXi is the choice on a single dedicated box (I'll have to try it out sometime )

9/10/2009 11:05:08 AM

http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/hypervisor-wars-vsphere-compelling-microsoft-admins-807

9/10/2009 12:35:29 PM

ESXi rocks for single-server setups, I use it here at work. VMWare Workstation is the choice at home, and Server is fine if you want free. Workstation only offers a few perks over Server anyway.

If you couldn't tell, I'm kind of a VMWare fanboy.

9/10/2009 3:32:14 PM

^^^nobody actually pays that much for a vSphere license you do have a point when it comes to the licensing model - that's a constant problem for us. we have to figure out what the most efficient ratio of physical cores to RAM is to keep licensing costs down (we settled on 4 physical cores (24 logical, i love nehalem) and 128GB of RAM). hyper-v does have the advantage there.

i've used hyper-v (and VI/xen/vsphere) in an enterprise environment and i can confidently say vsphere was the easiest to manage out of everything. it also has the richest API/SDK, which is of huge importance in setups like mine. also, does hyper-v have HA/DRS/vMotion equivalents? if not, that's a dealbreaker.

but, like you said, we are talking about desktop virtualization here anyway

for desktop virtualization (on windows, at least), i'd have to go for virtualbox - i hate the interface to vmware server. i just hope oracle doesn't kill it off now...

9/10/2009 9:02:20 PM

virtualbox is dead isn't it? or is that virtual iron

9/11/2009 1:45:02 AM

Quote :

" it also has the richest API/SDK, which is of huge importance in setups like mine. also, does hyper-v have HA/DRS/vMotion equivalents? if not, that's a dealbreaker."

Hyper-v has SCVMM and .NET for extension, there's not much you can't do to extend it.

Yes (via failover clustering as well as virtual failover in R2), Sort of (hyper-v uses PRO, which handles DRS inside the clients, rather than externally like vmware), Yes (live migration is a helluva lot better than vMotion. you have ~100ms lapse in TCP/IP availability, no downtime, no degraded performance).

don't get me wrong, VMWare makes INCREDIBLE products. vSphere is THE top of the line environment. But you pay through the nose for that. TCO for hyper-v is something like 60% less than a comparable vmware environment, and the bigger you scale, the cheaper hyper-v gets. R2 supports 192 cores now too

9/11/2009 4:25:36 AM

RHEV

9/11/2009 9:05:38 AM

Quote :

"why, exactly, would you run an entire server OS + hypervisor when you could just run the bare-metal 300MB-or-so ESXi and save resources for your VMs?"

apparently there's a baremetal hyper-v offering http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx i dunno what the footprint is, but i'm sure it's less than 20GB

9/12/2009 12:36:56 PM

^now that's pretty interesting.

Quote :

"SCVMM"

all of the system center products suck... at least, in my opinion. we tried that out along with MOM and it was pretty horrible.

9/12/2009 3:30:36 PM

while we're on the subject of virtualization, i just learned you can use Acronis True Image Echo Workstation to convert .tib image files into .vmdk VMWare machines...trying it out now for the first time

9/12/2009 4:06:16 PM

^^^ Good find! I'm probably going to use that instead of the full Win Server myself

^^The old System Center wasn't the best, but its been completely overhauled in the past year or two. Massively improved. The administration experience I've worked on for TFS is based heavily on the design patterns for the new system center It's worth a second look if its been a while

9/13/2009 11:48:59 AM

While we're on the topic, can anyone point me towards an xp vm I can download and use?

9/13/2009 4:03:15 PM

y'all ready for story time with uncle qntm?

i spent most of saturday fiddling around with this stuff. first i installed ESXi 4.0 on my media server hardware with a spare hard drive (hoping i wouldn't have to wipe my dev box, a dell precision 690 that i had just finished installing win7 + all my dev tools a few days prior). it didn't like the fact that it only had 2 GB RAM.

so i installed ESXi 4.0 on my dev machine and it installed quick, worked great except it couldn't find my wifi card (i had just bought a new wmp300n because this box sits upstairs where i don't have ethernet access). so i googled for a bit on how to maybe add drivers or something. googling for vmware problems was worthless though - i got 0 helpful results, not even a blog post saying "hey dumbass don't expect to use a wifi card for a vm server"

so i took a wifi g card out of my mediaserver and tried to get ESXi to recognize that. nope. then i tried to install ESXi 3.5 hoping maybe it would find it. nope.

ok so now i've given up on ESX and install Hyper-V Server on the media server. it doesn't find my wifi card either. i give up on wifi and run 100 ft ethernet upstairs. now Hyper-V Server doesn't even like the onboard nic on my motherboard. also, apparently you can't create a VM from the Hyper-V Server itself. you have to download a remote management tool that only runs on vista or windows 2008, neither of which i run regularly so that's kindof a pain in the butt.

now i install windows server 2008 r2 and add the hyper-v role. finally, it works and i create a couple VMs. btw this only took up about 10 GB hard drive space, as opposed to the 20 that was previously mentioned in the thread. still no native wifi support though and my wife sure isn't gonna let me leave ethernet trailing through the livingroom and up the stairs so i try out a couple workarounds from google but can't get it working.

while waiting for win2k8 to download and install, i'm trying variations of ESXi again but it won't even install anymore. while it's installing it crashes and does this



happens with both 4.0 and 3.5. reset bios and took out all peripherals and still no luck. oh well. so long ESXi

so now i'm in the process of reinstalling win7 + all my dev tools on the dell. gonna try out vmware server, but i'll always feel a little unfulfilled that it's not running baremetal and that i won't have a few of the VMs I plan on creating as always-on.

9/13/2009 11:54:11 PM

yeah, it definitely takes some hacking to get ESXi 4 running on most non-server class hardware... probably more trouble than it's worth, unfortunately

it'll run just fine on that dell precision workstation you sold on ebay, though

3.5 was a bit easier to get working... they completely overhauled the architecture with 4.

9/14/2009 7:46:03 AM

^^Interesting on the hyper-v server. The remote management tools work on Win7, btw (they just aren't "officially" supported because Win7 technically still hasn't been released).

As for the wifi card, there may not be built in drivers, but you can DEFINITELY install the Win7/Vista drivers for your wireless card. Just a manual download, install, UAC prompt and you should have wireless working fine. Do this all the time with laptops at work running 2k8. It's a little annoyance, but nothing like trying to get wireless working on a *nix box.

9/14/2009 8:19:39 AM

qfred I has a 2U rackmount dell 2650 you can buy if you want

[Edited on September 14, 2009 at 8:23 AM. Reason : i know for a fact it runs ESXi just fine]

9/14/2009 8:23:12 AM

^^^ that dell precision i sold on ebay i ended up keeping and that's what i was installing ESXi on. it was even on the HCL so I dunno why it won't install again. I tried it like 10 times.

^^ here's some of the posts i consulted on the wifi issue
http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/timmangan/archive/2008/11/30/a-look-at-microsoft-quot-hyper-v-server-quot-on-a-notebook.aspx
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/john_paul_cook/archive/2008/03/23/using-wireless-with-hyper-v.aspx

I'm sure I could get the wifi setup properly if I worked on it a little more, but combined with all the other less-than-ideal aspects of hyper-v right now, I'd rather go back to regular single OS until I can get a real dedicated box to play around with

9/14/2009 9:09:53 AM

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&p=134420

drop box has experimental support for OS X guests. neato

4/29/2010 1:44:24 PM

Quote :

"(hoping i wouldn't have to wipe my dev box, a dell precision 690 that i had just finished installing win7 + all my dev tools a few days prior)"

i realize this was 7 months ago, but why not just use Acronis/Ghost/[insert imaging software here] to make a copy of the drive...then you don't have to worry about wiping it. It takes like 10-20 minutes depending on the amount of data...and you can do it right in windows (with Acronis).

Quote :

"my wife sure isn't gonna let me leave ethernet trailing through the livingroom and up the stairs so i try out a couple workarounds from google but can't get it workin"

i doubt the wife has let this continue to be a problem after 7 months , but why not set up a DD-WRT-ified router as a wireless bridge upstairs? I ended up doing that in my office and it's been a big help...i don't have to install usb adapters on each of the neverending stream of computers that go through there.

4/29/2010 2:08:13 PM

^^ Is there a way to adjust the resolution of Virtualbox VMs, though? I have both a WinXP and a Ubuntu 10.04 LTS instance, and they top out at 800x600. Am I just dumb?

[Edited on May 2, 2010 at 2:22 AM. Reason : too late, and I appear to be illiterate]

5/2/2010 2:21:14 AM

Another + for VMWare ESXi. We had several machines running VMWare, the last one we set up we connected to a SAN and ran the OS of the VMs off the SAN. Also used the harddrive converter tool to move physical drives over to the VM.

5/2/2010 3:37:30 PM

I'm about to get a beastly workstation/server at work to setup and run VM's for our design group.

I was absolutely stunned how cheap hardware is today.

2xXeons (each quad core, 8mb caches), 12gb ram, 4x250gb drives hot swappable, and assorted bells and whistles was like 2300 bucks.

Super excited to see how Hyper-V scales up for the group. Now that everything has client rendering pass-through (herro Windows 7 + Windows Server 2008 R2), the performance is pretty awesome.

5/2/2010 3:55:10 PM

Virtualbox for workstations
VMWare for Servers

5/2/2010 4:40:44 PM

setting up boot to vhd on all my computers today

5/29/2010 10:09:13 AM

lulz

just found .img files for windows 3.1

installing now

5/29/2010 12:17:38 PM

bing suggested this site today while i was debugging a sysprep error message

http://www.rselby.net/vistaprogram5.htm

5/30/2010 2:55:41 PM

ha, I want Win3.1 VM. That'd be awesome! Probably not though.

5/30/2010 3:04:19 PM

lol i can send you the files if you want them

it was cool for about 8 seconds. then i played solitaire for a few minutes and then deleted it all and installed something else

[Edited on May 30, 2010 at 3:41 PM. Reason : asdf]

5/30/2010 3:40:27 PM