Which OS Makes the Best VMWare Host?

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?"

vmware server or workstation?

[Pinehill.net]

Windows is probably the best host for workstation, mostly because the current state of video drivers makes windows better for any app that needs graphical output. I haven't run GSX/server, but given my experience with ESX I would assume that linux is superior for those kinds of workloads.

Linux can be stripped down

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Linux desktop machine that runs Vmware workstation, and basically nothing else (the window manager is TWM, pretty minimal). I run several FreeBSD and Linux VMs so that I can do development.

I've never used it under XP, and never on a laptop, but you might want to consider that with Linux you can tune everything (filesystems, kernel, etc), remove stuff you don't use (printer daemon, etc), etc.

It depends...

[222]

I've run GSX Server on both Win2k3 64-bit and Suse Enterprise 64-bit, and neither one really presented any issues. The linux configuration is slightly more complicated, but its nothing to really shake a stick at.

The core issue is which OS are you more familiar with? If that isn't an issue, then there are some benefits to the *nix side of things.

It's possible to get a linux install down to 200~ megs while only using 64 megs of system memory, which is a strong advantage. If I understand correctly ESX Server is essentially a very very thin linux distro. That should say something ;)

I've also read of a perl script that can make hot backups of a Virtual Machine; while this is possible under Windows using commercial products, it's another thing to be taken into consideration.

Hope this helps ;)

On my laptop....

[Trelane]

I run Linux, and have VMware around for the (thankfully very very few) times I need to run Windows. With attached storage, I'm thinking about also doing a SuSE image, to help walk my parents through how to do things on their computers.

So, as a Linux user, I run Linux as the host, and Windows XP & 98 as the guests.

That's my situation anyway. Things work fine on my laptop under Linux, and I hope my next laptop will be even better (since I'll be ditching ATI on the laptop for Intel (and a linux pre-install, which should give the "works with linux" guarantee even if I don't keep the original install around (plus, I get to give a distro money!)), which will likely make things even easier.)

Re:Don't forget coLinux

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Is colinux still alive? It is far from a complete project, and has had only a single 0.0.X update in the last year.

The project is cool, but doesn't work very well and seems quite stale.

Linux. I have no choice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to share some experience. I have just bought a new computer but with no floppy drive (to save money). Therefore, I could not load the SATA driver during windows install from floppy and could not install Windows XP.

After struggled for 1 week (trying to rebuild the windows install CD to include the driver, etc), I installed VMWare Server in linux, installed XP in a virtual machine directly accessing the harddisk, installed the SATA driver and eventually got a working windows which boot from BIOS.

http://fat-penguin.mocasting.com/p/55116 [mocasting.com] :P

Re:VMWare on a laptop will choke

[level_headed_midwest]

I can achieve a 55-60MB sustained write speed (granted, it was in making/transferring large files, not a lot of little ones) and ~70MB read speed on a single 74GB WD Raptor. RAID0 does help with the speed, but it also 1/n the MTBF of the drives, so I wouldn't do it. But if I wanted to, I could simply get two more Raptors and hook them into the spare two SATA ports on my board and let my NForce4 chipset control them in RAID 0 and do so with a much higher transfer rate than a PCI bus can support. 2 WD Raptors will saturate a PCI bus, the NF4 SATA controller runs off of PCIe lanes, which are much faster.