Which OS Makes the Best VMWare Host? 141
astrojetsonjr asks: "A few days ago, Trillian_1138 asked about running Linux on a laptop. Yagu started a thread suggesting the use of VMWare to allow running multiple flavors of Linux and Windows at the same time. Lots of readers then posted their success stories using VMWare . My primary machine is an IBM laptop and I'm getting ready to move to using VMWare to allow me run Linux, Solaris and Windows at the same time. First, what is the OS/distro with which you have had the best success hosting VMWare? Finally, what host OS install and setup tips do suggest?"
Under Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
However, to be honest, on a laptop it likely makes more sense to run the host as WinXP. With Linux hosting and XP in Vmware, you don't get hardware graphics acceleration (perhaps in either OS.) Linux and laptops are still not there yet, so you may as well use XP as the host OS and get full hardware support.
Re:VMWare ESX (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Linux and XFS (Score:4, Insightful)
Even worse story for crashes. I've had to go to backup many times because a heavily used system locks up and XFS gets into it's unable to find superblocks or another one of it's infamous cryptic, non documented bugs/errors. I don't recall ever having to do this on a ext3 system unless the disk went bad or it crashed multiple times without a fsck.
That said, XFS is an excellent choice is some areas, such as realtime (soft guarentee) systems, etc.
Re:Depends on your hardware. (Score:2, Insightful)
The days of 'unstable Win32' died with Win9x and ME... 2000 and XP on supported hardware is just as stable as any other OS. Linux fans who claim otherwise (usually on the basis that they saw a friend's Windows system crash) have about as much credibility as the idiots who reflexively claim all kernel panics to be 'linux bugs'.
Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depends on your hardware. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let me answer your question with a question (Score:5, Insightful)
What is it with people and their desire to try and disseminate your reason for having or wanting to, God forbid, purchased a software package. Mostly I hear it from people who -
- don't use VM's for business work
- don't like commercial software
- don't understand that time == money
- have more time on their hands than pending tasks
It's one thing to not want to purchase software, fair enough - but let's not try and stone people.
Fact is, vmware out of the "box" runs and runs very well. It's a dead simple system to use even with an unsupported distro like Slackware linux. It's $199 USD (for workstation) and the cost of the purchase is long forgotten after the ease of use has saved you many times more. There's a lot more "messing around" with other solutions. You can burn up $199 in wages in half a day.
The difference between a functional package and a usable -and- functional package often isn't a lot but it's a small difference that a lot of people are more than happy to pay for.
Linux makes for a better host.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If a usb device has no driver under linux then it can be passed straight through and driven by an os running under vmware (you have to unload native linux drivers for any device you want passed to vmware), the windows version works differently in that you must have a native driver installed before you can pass a device to vmware. This issue has manifested itself many times when we've been at customer sites and presented with a random usb device (usb to serial adapters mainly) for which windows requires extra drivers (and linux includes drivers in the default kernel).
Performance - networking runs much faster when vmware is running atop linux, this is especially important for me as i`m often doing pentesting which involves lots of network scanning...
Security - you can nat your windows images behind your base linux install, your base linux can have everything turned off to minimise the chances of it being exploited (windows will often not let you turn some services off)
And finally, try vmware server as opposed to workstation, you can run it headless and only attach a gui when you want one..
OMFG!!! Truth Floats! - MOD PARENT UP!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
On Windows, you install VMWare once! Without any compiling! And you never have to install/compile again!
On a side note... All these people recommending Qemu have obviously never tried VMWare. With VMWare, performance is reasonable and the hardware isn't overly stressed, even with multiple concurrent guests. With Qemu, you are in for such a slow experience you will want to kill yourself. As if that wasn't bad enough, your hardware will be at 100% utilization for all the time you're waiting and waiting and waiting! Qemu sucks so hard it blows, when compared to VMWare!