I'm going to develop mostly Django sites on a MacBook Pro and would like to use Ubuntu VMs for testing purposes.
Which product is better suited for this purpose?
Can I connect to the VM via TCP/IP (so I can have apache running on the VM and access it from Safari on my MBP)?
Thanks!
It should be possible using VMWARE FUSION. It has a good network management, and you should be able to access easily your vm via network.
I've successfully used both VirtualBox and VMWare Fusion for this. On both systems, you can set the guest up so that it has its own IP address, and connect to it via HTTP, SSH and even native file sharing, so you can mount the guest's drive as a network drive from the Mac, and vice versa. This makes it possible to do the editing on the Mac in eg Textmate, but run the server on the VM.
I can only tell you about my experiences with a Core2Quad Q6600 on VMWare Fusion 3.0. I have three boot partitions on this system (ahem yes it is a hackintosh running with the E-Fix USB).
So i can do performance measurements. I use it for sometimes very large compiler sessions. And the amazing fact was that Linux as a Guest runs without any measureable time difference on virtualised and native Linux. Windows7 on the other hand only runs with 40% on my machine and GUI is allmost non useable while the GNOME Desktop from latest Ubuntu still works fine.
Check this out. Virtual Box is free so there is nothing to loose.
Related
I've got a decent PC that I'd like to install xenserver on, but it's also my primary workstation. Wondering if it's possible to access guests directly from the host machine -- meaning, can I use the monitor, input devices, etc that are attached to the host, to interact with the guests.
Currently setup as a dual boot Linux and Windows machine. I need them both running simultaneously while still being able to treat the host like a workstation. Already using Virtualbox, which is great but not what I'm aiming for.
I've searched high and low for an answer to this question. Maybe I wasn't searching with the right terms. I've found a package in the Ubuntu repos that adds an entry in grub along the lines of 'Ubuntu with Xen Hypervisor', but that was on a test machine that couldn't actually run Xen.
Normally, I'd just wipe this puppy and find out for myself, but there are really good reasons why I can't just jump into it this time, so I'm turning to the community.
Thanks for any and all info!
You can use a simple text console on the host to interact with the guests
xe console vm=guest
but I don't know of a way to access a graphical interface from the host.
I couldn´t find any information on the documentation of VMware about this topic. Any advise on where to find information on this is very appreciated.
VMware workstation, fusion and player are desktop productions that run on top of other operating systems like windows, linux and mac os. VMware ESX, ESXi run on bare metal directly. Since VMware Infrastructure 3 is built upon ESX and ESXi 3.X, it is ok for you to run workstation on top of VI3. But it should be pointed out that workstation running on VI3 won't support hardware virtualization even if your physical cpu ships with hardware virtualization solution. However, latest ESXi and even workstation support so called "nested virtualization" in non-production environment. Actually, I have a virtual ESXi 5 server that runs within my fusion 5.
Assuming that you mean that you want to run a virtualization solution (VMware Workstation) on top of another virtualization solution (VMware Infrastructure), although I'm not sure why you would want to do that instead of simply using a single virtualization solution (either Infrastructure or Workstation, depending on what your needs/goals are), I don't believe that it's blocked. To VMware Infrastructure, the guest OS that you're running Workstation on should just look like any other guest OS, albeit one that's probably using a lot of resources.
You might find someone else who is trying to accomplish the same thing in the Workstation community.
we are setting up new QE testing server. I guess host OS will be win2008
Which vmware server to choose - 1.x or 2.x ?
A year ago I tried vmware 1 server with Win2008 and it did not work at all.
However, Vmware server 2 did not seem to have the handy vmware console
VMware Server Console\vmware.exe
(is the new vmware server2 still just web based?)
we have a lot of vmware 1 images, are these ok for v2?
Or is it just better to go with HyperV?
Hyper-V Server or ESXi would probably be the best performing and most trouble free options - ie virtualisation not really dependant on the host operating system (but still free).
You can use tools like Vmdk2Vhd to convert image files. Be aware that you should boot the image in its old format first and uninstall vmware tools and some drivers like specific disk controller drivers (as per the instructions of the tool) before you convert it.
Going the enterprise route the System Center Virtual Machine Manager can do this mostly automatically, but then it's not a free solution anymore :) This platform can of course also do physical to virtual migrations for you...
...but alas, you can prepare a physical machine the same way as before converting a vmware image and then use normal imaging tools to clone it into a virtual machine. Or you can use Vmware's free converter tool and then convert the resulting vmdk image to vhd :)
Vmware Server v2 can use v1 images. Windows Server 2008 is supported only in v2. v2 also includes the Virtual Infrastructure Client which you can use instead of the web access ( the client replaces the old console from v1). This is the same client that is used with ESX.
vmware 2.0 crashed regularly on one server I have - however, hasn't crashed since the recent 2.0.1 update (but its only been a week).
I have w2K8 running under vmware 1.0.9 - by selecting Vista (experimental) as the OS setting. However, it's not under any load yet.
I'd recommend ESXi over VMware Server (you can migrate the images) purely for performance reasons. Server 2008 and Vista both run abysmally under VMware Server from my experience. With ESXi and a decent hardware RAID setup, things can be a bit more bearable.
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Background:
I'm running a full-time job and a part-time job in the weekends, and both my employers have supplied a laptop for me to work on. Of course I also have my powerful workstation at home to work from, and sometimes when I'm at the office at my weekend job (it's in another city) I'm working from yet another workstation.
Problem:
That makes a full 4 PC's I'm maintaining (software versions, licences and settings) just to do my work, and believe me, my list of prefered software is way too big.
I want to setup a Virtual Desktop on my VMware server, so I can work from the same installation and same session no matter which PC I'm working from.
Now I don't have the time and money to go through a full test of each setup, so I'd like to hear your experiences on the subject.
Question:
Should I use a VMware virtual workstation with some remote logon software (like realVNC, teamviewer, logmein, whatever...) or should I invest in a full VDI system like Sun or VMware provide?
Edit:
I'm programming in Adobe Dreamweaver on Windows XP - but I run my servers on Debian and sometimes do quick edits in VIM too. First I intend to virtualize a WinXP with base installation, to see how it runs.
I am a consultant and tend to work in a variety of environments. I carry a Thinkpad running VMWare Server over Ubuntu64 with 4GB of RAM. I've got a 320GB secondary hard drive that I use just for VM's and have 25 or so different virtual machines that I boot up as the circumstances demand.
They're a mix of Linux servers and workstations, Vista workstations and XP Workstations. I rarely use the VMWare server console. I access every one of them via one of the remote access methods.
For Linux, I usually install FreeNX or NXServer for desktop access and just SSH for commandline. On Windows, I always use Remote Desktop (RDP), but, on XP, that only works on the "Pro" versions, not the "Home" versions. If all else fails, I install VNC and use that. VNC is at the bottom of my list because it really is a last resort. The only thing it's better than is not actually being able to use the machine.
However, NX on Linux and RDP on Windows work WAY better than VNC. Other than little things like font smoothing and fancy desktop effects, the only big glitch would be if you are doing much with video or audio or DirectX-based stuff. Things like YouTube or other video do NOT like to work with any remote desktop protocol that I know of.
As far as performance, using Linux as a host for VMWare provides really good management of system resources. The Windows-based VM's aren't able to just gobble up memory, but still get it when they need to.
I do C# development all day in a virtual Vista workstation on Visual Studio 2008 and have absolutely no problems having 3-4 different solutions all open at once along with the normal stuff alongside over RDP on another machine, connected via wireless VPN.
I can flip over to the host OS and it won't even be touching swap space at all. As far as I'm concerned, it's a great way to work.
If you want to work with the same installation, you should seriously consider the Remote Desktop Server/Client solution, bundled into every windows OS from XP. Basically, this app displays the view from your remote desktop to your local one, using highly compressed images; this works even via low-bandwidth internet connections
While the XP version can only handle one user simultaneously, the one in Windows Server 2003 (and in Windows Server 2008, I presume) can handle multiple users (up to a certain limit).
Disadvantages, and side-effects include:
virtual pc via RDC is slow
anything using the 3d acceleration will be slow (at least using XP/2003)
Personally, I would go down the route of using a virtual workstation with some remote logon software. The network performance of VMWare has always been good in my experience, and depending on the OS, there may be a decent remote logon provided.
I guess you can live with Logmein Free. [Or Pro if u want those features]
Well, you don't say what OSs are involved, so.....
For windows, I find that Remote Desktop works as well or better than anything else, although if you pay for the RealVNC version with the mirror driver, that's supposed to be as good.
For off site access for windows, www.logmein.com (the free version) works very well.
If Unixes are involved, then VNC is definitely the way to go, there are various solutions for doing this remotely. Everything from redirection servers, to just forwarding a port in your firewall to an ssh server and setting up the various tunnels.
Performance of VMWare is very good, and I can run a SQL Server slice, a web server slice and develop on my laptop simultaneously. The VM slices reside on a USB 2 portable drive and make it easy to port between my laptop and desktop.
VM Console works well for accessing each environment, and depending on the configuration you set up with NAT vs. Bridging you can UNC to shares on slice.
The nice by-product of this is that should you host machine take a nose dive you can quickly recover your development environment.
I'm using VMware Workstation 6.0 for simulation of tight clusters of "blades" in a "chassis". Both the host and target OSs are Linux. Each "chassis" uses a vmnet switch as a virtual backplane, to which the virtual blades connect. Other vmnet switches are used to mediate point-to-point connections between mutiple virtual ethernet adapters on each blade VM. The chassis, and thus the VMs, are brought up and shutdown rather frequently. My scripts (python) make heavy use of the VIX api, and also manipulate the .vmx config file.
What do I gain and/or lose going from VMware Workstation to ESX? Do my scripts that use the VIX api still work? Do my rather complicated virtual network topologies, with lots of vmnet switches defined as "custom", still work the same way? Is the syntax and semantics of the .vmx config file the same between Workstation and ESX?Thanks in advance for your help.
The first thing you'll gain by switching will be a substantially more powerful platform that's running directly on the bare-metal of your server.
From my experience, moving up the VMware application stack has never been problematic (Server to Workstation to ESX). However, I would verify this by exporting all of your VMs from the workstation install to an ESX install to make sure you're not seeing any 'weird' issues related to running the high-end tool from VMware.
From my [limited] experience, scripts also carry-over cleanly: each offering moving up their product line doesn't break lower-level tools, but do add substantial improvements.
You get scalability and performance.
ESX scales much better and run much faster than any of VMware desktop products like Workstation or Player.
You should not lose anything. ESXi performs all the functions that Workstation does, plus a lot more. I use ESXi at home and Workstation on my laptop.
You will gain more fine-grained control over the virtual networks, over storage, snapshots, cloning, quiescing guest OSes, and many more advanced options in ESXi configuration.
One thing to note is the considerable expense of the ESX line compared to Workstation. If you're working for a successful company, though, the cost can easily be justified as ESX is (imho) da bomb. Also, FYI, the old free VMware Server options definitely had a whole different interface.