[PLUG] VMplayer at the linux clinic

[Kris]

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Keith Lofstrom wrote:
>> In my experience, the beta versions of the products are crippleware,
>> which is why I don't use them.  They are instrumented with all sorts
>> of debug stuff, and are very slow compared to VMplayer.  YMMV.
>>   
> Yeah ... don't use the beta versions for anything except finding out if
> your old use cases still work with the new version. They are otherwise
> useless.
> 
> VMware Server is OK -- it's essentially a cleaned-up version of VMware
> GSX. But GSX itself is a stripped version of Workstation, with some
> "server-like" features. The guest is essentially a parasite -- it runs
> as "root" and all of the guest's user or system time clocks to the
> host's *system* time!! You get what you pay for.

krisa at hooloovoo:~$ vmware -v
VMware Server 1.0.1 build-29996

krisa at hooloovoo:~$ ps -ef ww|grep vmx
vmware    5790     1  3 Feb01 ?        S<sl 849:48
/usr/local/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx -C /var/vm/trillian2/trillian2.vmx
-@ ""
vmware    6634     1  1 Feb02 ?        S<sl 414:25
/usr/local/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx -C /var/vm/zaphod/zaphod.vmx -@ ""

I have production vmware server installations humming along just fine.
As you can see they run as the "vmware" user.  The trick is chown'ing
the directory where your vm's will live to the user, and logging into
the server console as that user.  New guests will be created and run as
that user.  You can even chown different guests to different users who
can manage them separately through the console.

One installation has an uptime of 134 days (two guests: one
debian/sarge, one Windows 2003 Server).  No issues.

> My advice: buy ESX or download Xen. GSX or VMware Server is more trouble
> than it's worth. I have a Windows-host Workstation 5.5 license, which I
> am not planning to upgrade to 6.0.

I was ready to go with vmware infrastructure for a new deployment to
give it a try.   I backed out quickly when I found out VI3 could only be
fully managed using a Windows-only application (the web interface is not
full management).  Ooo this boiled my blood.  If you need it,
VirtualCenter looks like it requires production Windows servers to be
maintained.

So for an Ubuntu/Debian-only guest environment I need redundant Windows
server infrastructure and the talent (and finger crossing) to maintain
it?  Pass.

Another small irritation is VI3 forces an OS on you (RedHat).

XenEnterprise does this too (forcing a RedHat variant as underlying OS).
 Yes, yes, tuned environment, support, etc, etc.

Vmware server runs great on dapper and sarge, though it is not FOSS.
Eventually once KVM is baked and part of Ubuntu, I'll start testing.  I
have 2216 model Opteron's waiting for a stable KVM installation.  I
thought about compiling KVM for dapper, but I'm not convinced it's baked
yet, and the latest dapper misses VT extension detection by one version
(>=2.6.16.. dapper=2.6.15).

Oh, if you use LV's for you vmware guests like I do, be sure to allocate
enough disk space for the flat disk file *and* for a file equal to the
memory you allocate.  I got burned by the generation of a 2G .vmem file
equal to the 2G of RAM I gave the guest.

-- 
I'm just a packet pusher.