VMware "Miles Ahead" of Microsoft Virtual Server

sunshineluv7 writes, "IT managers gathered in New York City earlier this week to get advice from experts on when, why, and how to virtualize their server environments. The takeaway from the conference: if you want to run an enterprise-class virtualization platform in production today, stick with VMware." Other wise words from this conference: "Virtualization is a journey, not a project."

Binary Translation

[DrDitto]

VMWare does on-the-demand binary translation (BT) to avoid traps. I could be wrong, but I don't think Microsoft Virtual Server does BT.

virtual bsod?

[192939495969798999]

Help me/us countryfolk understand: So if you get a BSOD in a virtual environemnt, are you dead or not? I imagine that with some of the Windows hardware hooks, you'd probably be dead anyhow, so it wouldn't matter if you were virtually dead or really dead.

Anecdotal evidence of VMWare being better

[Acer500]

It's mostly anecdotal, but I work at a Microsoft shop, and several developers still clamor for VMWare even though we have Virtual Server for free, as it seems to be a lot better performance-wise.

I'm still waiting for an update to Virtual PC, there the difference is abysmal.

Also, would it be possible to emulate some other hardware? The current video card emulated by Virtual PC won't support Aero.

Re:Binary Translation

[angryargus]

Virtual Server does BT (it has to in order to work on non-VT processors), but Xen doesn't do BT (which is why Xen needs paravirtualiztion support in Linux, and VT processors for Windows).

It's TBD on whether "Windows Server Virtualization" will use BT, but I suspect they'll drop it. With Intel processors it's not possible to do BT when using VT on x64 processors in 64-bit mode (however it is possible on AMD processors).

Linux-for-Windows screensaver ?

[quiberon2]

The quick and dirty virtualisation is with the Linux-for-Windows Screensaver [thepiratebay.org]; screenshot here [linuxtracker.org]

Re:VMware

[Instine]

I'm not sure which builds exactly, but I know I tried three times, and failed three times to put Vista (Beta2 and RC1) on VPC and failed three times. Worked for each buold first time on VMWare. I mean come on M$! Its hard not to flamebait, when they're just failing so badly. What do they think all the developers of the world are going to do with their pre-public releases?

I finally replaced Windows at work

[TheLetterZ]

I finally replaced XP at work with Kubuntu. The one thing holding me back was actually none other than iTunes - yeah sure I could use amarok, but I have purchased a lot of music on iTMS plus I like iTunes' radio channels and iTunes in general. And by the way, I also have a lot of historic Outlook mail.

I installed VMWare on my Dell laptop, created a 30GB partition (of which 20GB is MP3/M4P), installed the Dell XP Pro OEM version in VMWare, which automatically picked up the system's XP key, and I got iTunes running in VMWare, Office 2003 for historical mail and the odd Word/Powerpoint/Excel documents which OpenOffice 2 has difficulties handling.

I guess the ironic part here is that I had to install an antivirus program on a laptop running Linux, but now that Evolution gets along just fine with the company's Exchange 2003 server (even the calendar entries shows up - I am impressed at how good it actually is!), I am in general a much happier human being running Linux, and I have the best of both worlds (depending on your point of view) being able to run iTunes and Office 2003 on my Linux laptop!

Re:In all objectivity...

[Rob Riggs]

I'm no fan of Novell, but their "first crack at it" was a technology preview of Xen, which by its own admission only supported OSes that have been ported to the Xen hypervisor. It's not like the Xen folks could get the Windows XP source and release a version ported to Xen, now, could they? They were not claiming it would work with other OSes without VT.

Your comment about that seems like an attempt to deflect attention away from the GP's implied point, which was... the knowledge, borne out of years of experience, of just about everyone I know in this industry that must administer a heterogeneous computing environment, that MS does not play nice with others. Every admin, when they consider using MS products in such an environment, has to ask himself, "How will Microsoft fsck me over with this decision?"

I'm doing that now, even as I advocate moving our NIS maps into Active Directory, converting from NIS to LDAP and doing SSO with Kerberos using AD as the KDC.