VMWare Rolls Out Their Largest Product Release 154
opieum writes "VMware has launched Virtual Infrastructure 3.0 today which includes ESX 3.0 and a number of management utilities." Relatedly Jane Walker writes "SearchOpenSource has two authors that try to show why VMware ESX Server is miles ahead of Xen and Virtual Server. Discover what to watch out for when running ESX Server and how to avoid sprawl in your virtual data center."
VMWare Server 1.0 same as VMWare Workstation 5.x? (Score:3, Informative)
I want to crap my pants! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I just don't see it. (Score:4, Informative)
Replaced 2 old servers with notebook and VMWare (Score:5, Informative)
Now I know what you all are saying, but the X31 works great, and is plenty beefy for the 2 servers it is replacing (a Pentium III 500mhz and an AMD 1ghz). The great thing about it is, it is absolutely quiet, it has its own 12" screen, keyboard and mouse (track-pad), and it has a built in UPS system. I have it hooked up the the same UPS that was running the other 2 servers, so if the power goes out, this thing will probably run a week without power.
The SATA external drive is fast, so that isn't an issue, and since it is external I place the drive away from the computer and sight for safety.
VMWare Server is great, and I really appreciate the price (free). I'm currently using Virtual PC for my workstation virtualization (testing, different environments during development, etc), but since I'm so happy with VMWare Server, I'll be switching over to VMWare workstation on my next upgrade. If a client ever needs serious virtualization I'll recommend they give ESX server a try. I think VMWare giving away their basic server is a smart move for them.
The really nice thing about converting my physical servers to virtual ones is how portable they are now. I literally can suspend my 2 servers, disconnect my external SATA drive, move it to a beefy machine, connect it, and resume the 2 servers on the faster machine; that's slick.
Re:I just don't see it. - step back and look again (Score:5, Informative)
1) Upgrading / retiring a server? Set up the new box, install VMWare, shut down VM on old server, copy files, bring VM up on new server - it never will know the difference (and this is without a SAN!) Got a SAN - VMotion the VM to a new server -0- (zero) downtime.
2) Custom app you only want to setup one and forget it! Great Plains, vendor platforms, your monitoring and cacti box. Set it up in a VM and let it live. You're never going to reinstall the box, so why put it on a box you may have to reinstall
3) Backups of a physical server suck. Think, with the box running, you can snap a fully functional complete disk image and move it offsite via nfs, cifs, ftp. If there is ever an issue, you roll back to that snap shot and it's just as if the server had a bad shutdown. No bare metal recovery that takes hours and hours. We're talking minutes (in a SAN enviroment).
4) Need a server to test something - create it! Setup anything you want in a VM - it doesn't care. Don't like it? Delete it! Need more power? Move it! Take it home with you for the weekend? Install player on your laptop and take the files with you!
5) Big hardware is better hardware. Running an enterprise on comsumer gear with a special sticker on the front is just bad. Enterprise grade servers are beaten into submission and have the best possible components. Dell has been known to hault production of a platform if a vendor's component fails during testing (the PE 4400's had this issue ~4 years ago). Using VMWare you can buy 2-3 big servers, rather than the 5-10 pc servers. Get 8-16gb of RAM per system. Get larger hard drives, and not waste so much space.
6) Isolate those apps. Sometimes its just better to let each application server have it's own OS instance. That way if you ever need to, you can replace them without having to worry that some interdependancy on the box will cause failures.
7) Its good to be green - think of the power savings when your entire enterprise is running on 1/10th the hardware. Using a performance SAN and a bunch of DL585's I can't think of a company under 10,000 people who can't run off of 1 racks worth of servers. Think about it - thousands of users, 100 server, in one rack. I have clients that are in the 50-100 user range running on 2 DL385's or PE2850's.
Re:VMWare Server 1.0 same as VMWare Workstation 5. (Score:5, Informative)
(Also, this blog entry [chipx86.com] might help with a few common misconceptions)
VMware Server, while similar in appearance and sharing much of the same functionality as Workstation, is a completely different product with a different use case and target audience. It is the successor to GSX, and is for people who want to set up, well, servers! The key feature that Server has that Workstation does not is remoting, where you run a server on a computer and connect to it from a separate computer via a remote console or web interface. The VMs can start up with the computer, shut down with it, and can be accessed by multiple users. The VMs also don't require an X installation to run the VMs, nor does it require any sort of UI to be running for the VM to run.
Workstation has a number of features that Server does not have. Among other differences, it supports multiple snapshots, teams of VMs (where multiple VMs can start up/shutdown together, can be in their own special network with custom NIC speeds and packet loss), and 3D acceleration in the guest (currently experimental, and requires DirectX in the guest for now). We have a lot in the works for the product, and the gap will widen.
The one difference that people seem to for some reason get upset over is the price. Workstation costs $189, while Server is free. People have asked me why they should get Workstation if Server is free. The answer is that you should get Workstation if it has the features you want. If Server is better suited to your requirements or budget, go ahead and get that. We're not trying to force you into buying Workstation, and we're in no way crippling the VMs. A VM made in Server should work in Workstation and Player just fine. Likewise, a VM made in Workstation should work in Server or Player.
Workstation is not somehow "better" than Server just because it costs more. It's a different product. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses. Yes, Server is free while Workstation is not, and part of this is because that's where mid-level server virtualization products were heading. Microsoft was considerably lowering the price on Virtual Server in an effort to hurt GSX sales. Xen, while not a huge contender in the enterprise yet, is free and good work is being done on it. Workstation, however, is unique enough in its dev/test features and still has value that we and our customers still feel is worth something. And you'll see that value continue to grow over time, just as you will with our other products.
I hope that helped you understand why we're still charging for Workstation while Server is free. Choose whichever product you like: Player, Server, Workstation, ACE, ESX.. They're all fine choices, and they all offer solutions to different problems. It's not just about virtualization itself anymore. It's about what you can build on top of it.
(Opinions expressed here are my own and are not necessarily representative of VMware, yada yada.)
for those that don't know (Score:1, Informative)
(Former VMWare employee, posting anonymously).
I wouldn't say miles Oglesby and Herold. (Score:3, Informative)
Management
Sure, the VMWare servers had nice pretty management tools that were probably a couple hundred yards ahead of Xen's CLI tools, but this company doesn't exactly tolerate idiots. The unix guys here are more than capbable of migrating to Xen, compiled from source with a customized kernel, with no problem. The command line configuration and live migration utilities are more than adequate considering we already have SSH access to the boxes in the back. There was no need to change the firewall configs to allow us VMWare console access or anything.
Performance
I ran series of benchmarks for the following applications: MySQL, Apache, Lighttpd, perl and php. All of the bechmarks were ran on the same hardware, I just re-imaged the two machines multiple times. Xen won in every race. As a matter of fact, on the dual core Opeteron SunFire the Xen vm was a whopping 600 seconds ahead of the VMWare vm at running MySQL's sql-bench suite.
Stability
Xen 3.0 is more stable, IMHO than VMWare. Though neither platform crashed or hosed, the ESX box had a lot of trouble keeping time via ntp and had some problems with disk I/O.
Distrust
I reported the time problem several times to the VMWare techs assigned to our case, and they assured me that it was a host os issue. Funny that this article mentions that ESX < 3 has a problem keeping time with a 2.6 kernel isn't it?
Future
Later this week I'll be recieving the first Intel VT enabled server we purchased. I'll soon see if any OS or any kernel (including GRSec [grsecurity.org] patched) kernels can be booted under Xen. If that is case, my company is likely is to purchase XenSource's commercial products.