VMware Releases Server 1.0 292
epit writes "VMware has released v1.0 of their VMware Server product for free (as in beer) as planned. Up until now, it had been a beta download. You can download your copy via the VMware website. Release notes are also available."
Free download... sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)
Are there any legit home uses for VMware on a regular basis?
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:2)
Running multiple OSes on one machine
Isolated test environments
Running OSes on unsupported hardware
Running legacy apps (see above)
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
While it doesn't allow me to stress test, it does allow me to test other aspects.
Plus i can install every OS/Browser combination I need and I only need to worry about diskspace. Plus, once you create the images, you never have to reinstall the OS, you just clone it. Awesome piece of software.
Software licences for each virtual machine (Score:2)
Strictly speaking, you need to purchase a new licence for each piece of software you use (including the operating system) on each virtual machine.
But other than that minor point, I agree with your post.
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:2)
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)
I have also used VMWare for some applications designed to "own" the computer they run on... these apps require certain OS versions, certain user accounts, filesystem structure, etc. etc.
We have also used VMWare to run Windows software on a Linux cluster. I wasn't closely involved, but as I understand it, numerical codes (which are main
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:2)
Why would you need more than one server on a big beefy server instead of running everything on one server? Different OSs or environments?
I definitely understand the freedom it buys you. Would you use it at home, or is it mostly a server rack IT sorta thing and that's about it?
I've always felt running a couple of VM's on the desktop could be a useful way of dealing with malware. Searching for pr0n and warez in a virtual machine and whack it when I'm done. Farting around with
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
It is also useful for things like clustered file servers. They don't take up much cpu/memory, but if you put two (or more) of them out there on a VM box you can roll them back and forth for patches, updates, adding drives, etc.
It also helps for disaster recovery. You can do the equivalent of a bare metal restore in a few minutes versus loading a machine from scratch, loading drivers, loading your backup software and then restoring.
So multiple answers - and I'm sure there are many more that I haven't listed.
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for sharing that.
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:2, Informative)
For example, Vmotion allows you to move a virtual machine from one physical machine to another while it's still running without interruption. The newest versions will even automagically load balance virtual machines.
It's all really amazing technology that makes you think that it should've been done this way in the first place.
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:4, Informative)
Good grief, where do I start?
Putting everything on one big server is a recipe for disaster. What if one app goes down and you need to take it down, reboot, rebuild, whatever? You have to take your whole bloody network down. Lots of angry users.
What if you upgrade your apache server which inadvertantly causes your mysql server to die? What do you do. Restore the whole shooting match from backups? Spend an hour or two trying to roll everything back? All while your users are looking over your shoulder asking "how long before it's fixed?"
Doing it that way is just shitfight city.
On the other hand, if you run all your servers virtually you open up a whole world of possibilities.
For example, a few years back I worked at a place that ran their whole operation on a bunch of NT4 servers made up of a pair of Compaq Proliant ML530's (which supported SMP but only had single 1Ghz P3s fitted). These servers also had 1Gb RAM each plus 3 x 18Gb SCSI in raid 5 configuration. On top of that they had a hodge podge of whitebox servers, all with SMP mobos but only single CPUs. It was a nightmare.
One day the backup tape drive died and the bosses were not keen to spend 3 grand for a new one. Also, I already had the shits with the whole shitfight so I built a few tempory boxes, moved the stuff onto them and pulled the 2 compaqs offline. I cannibalised one of them and made a monster (well it was back then) server with dual P3's, 2Gb RAM, 6 disk hardware raid and redundant PSU's. I kept the remaining chassis as a spare in case the main box died.
I stuck redhat 9 on the "monster" and GSX server on that. Then I built 8 virtual servers, 2 x Win2K AS and 6 x redhat 9 and ran all of the main apps (apache, sendmail, PDC, BDC, FIle+print, MySQl and a CRM package all on seperate virtual servers. Once this was done I switched off all the other boxes and after running like that for a few weeks to make sure all was OK I also scrapped those boxes. Again I cannibalised them and came up with a lesser monster whitebox which I also put vmware GSX on, stuck 1gbit lan cards in both and hooked the two up with a link cable, wrote some scripts to backup the servers across that link nightly.
So, I had rationalised the entire server room down to two boxes, considerably improved reliability and all for the price of a vmware license and on top of that I had a spare chassis available in case of a catastrophic failure.
About a year later one of the SCSI discs died. The whole thing kept working but it was sloooow. So, all I did was manually copy over the server images from the nightly backup, shutdown the main server and turn on the primary lan interface of the backup box. The whole shebang was back up and running within an hour with no loss of data. Neato.
Other advantages for vmware are;
If you want to do major upgrade to a server, you can just copy the server image to your development box, fire it up, do the upgrade and then test it all out. All perfectly safely. If you fuck it up then you just do it again and try to figure out what went wrong, document your steps and when it is time to do the live upgrade you simply do a manual backup and then do the upgrade. It should work OK because you have already tested and documented your process and even if it doesn't it is a simple job to just restart the old server from the backup you made and start again.
If you want to do something like a major overhaul of something like a webserver with a mysql backend then you will love vmware. You just leave your old server running and build up the new one over how many days/weeks/months you like. You can fully test it in a sandbox network (another great feature of vmware, "host only" networks) and once you are satisfied that all is well you just copy it over to the main box, shutdown the old virtual server, start up the new one and you're done. If there is a problem down the track you ju
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just have to get your digs in on Windows, don't you? So what about those people that like to virtualize Linux? Does Linux automatically suck too?
Or just maybe there's reasons that go beyond stability.
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:3, Informative)
Virtualization software takes that
Linux/UNIX virtualization (Score:3, Informative)
Just check into
OpenVZ http://openvz.org/ [openvz.org]
FreeBSD Jails http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_Jail [wikipedia.org]
Solaris zones http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zones/faq/ [opensolaris.org]
Xen http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ [cam.ac.uk]
and the list goes on. So much better on *nix. Of course, I think that is somehow related to the fact you can run a *nix box via CLI,
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
At work, we use vmware-server, running on Linux hosts, to run the Windows guests. We don't ever actually have any Linux guests. All of the services we use on Linux are perfectly capable of being installed parallel to other Linux apps... even installed or run multiple times on the same box. Nothing prevents you from launching two copies of Apache, two copies of some Java server, etc. Your limit is really RAM and CPU.
On Windows however it's a different situtation. You can only have
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:2)
I run a number of unix systems in the same way, i currently run 2 mailservers (1 for sending/receiving mail, 1 for spam filtering) spam filters, http/https, dns, database, ircserver, asterisk and jabber server on a single quad processor box with redundant power, raid5 disks, daily tape backup and ecc memory.
The OS does a good job of keeping everything apart from each other, and implements ulimits to prevent one service going nuts and consuming all the ram/cpu.
If i had to split all these se
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:4, Informative)
I've been in the situation where one of the above required updating to fix a security hole, effectively breaking the rest. For instance, one needed to be using mysql5 but the others didn't support it.
Now they can all live on their own separate Vmware machines and can be updated separately.
--jeffk++
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:2)
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:4, Informative)
Again this isn't really a VM thing but if you have a whole VM farm on a SAN - you can swap out whole servers without impacting running processes. We mainly use this for file servers / DNS / AD / print servers , but if your servers are beefy I don't see why you couldn't do this with any cluster aware application.
Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware (Score:5, Informative)
Why would you want to do that? I use a virtual machine to browse the Web - that way, my computer doesn't get bogged down by spyware (only the virtual machine does) and it's much more painless to simply purge a spyware-ridden virtual machine and start afresh than it is for your main computer.
Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware (Score:4, Informative)
VMWare Player [vmware.com] for Linux & Windows - $0
A good Linux distro [vmware.com] - $0 (yes, you may flame away)
Google Browser Sync [google.com] - $0
Blowing away anything that somehow made it onto your system - $priceless
-Tash
Vrooommm... [tashcorp.net]
Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware (Score:3, Insightful)
Polishing up your own rsync scripts - $0
Not having all your browser history and cookies handed over to a company's who's entire revenue steam is targetted advertising - priceless
Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware (Score:2)
Where where where? Gimme gimme!
Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)
Server virtualization is a hot market, Microsoft is ramping up their existing product line to compete with some of VMware's new features. Part of that roadmap is a good 2-3 years out. This is technology is far from a fad.
-David
PS: Legit home uses for
Evaluating Wikis using VMware virtual machines (Score:4, Informative)
See this page [twiki.org] for more information and download links.
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
ESX was great because it allows for much more efficient use of Server hardware. In a lot of cases we had applications running on seperate servers because the apps were unstable. Without VMWare that means seperate hardware (usually racks filled with shelves and desktop PCs if the company is cheap, or 1U servers if they're not) and all the administrative overhead of dealing with those servers. We had 30-40 VMs running inside 12 physical servers including heavily used primary and failover mail servers.
Running inside a VM gives you advantages if you're running a lights out data center, or if your servers are at a remote location. Many has been the time where a server hung and I needed someone on-site to power cycle it - with VMWare you can power cycle the VMs from anywhere, and I've never seen ESX take a dive (supposedly there's a purple screen of death, but I've never seen it)
Another advantage is backup/disaster recover planning. With a VM, your whole server is just a couple files. You can copy those files to a remote location via a variety of means, and boom, you have an off-site clone of your server. More importantly the VMs are hardware independent - you can have a datacenter filled with Dell 6850s burn to the ground and when you power up your VMs in a colo facility running HPs, the VMs don't care about there being different RAID cards, or NICs with the wrong MAC addresses.
This post was made on a Dell D620 running ubuntu with VMWare workstation on top hosting a windows VM for when I need to do windows stuff
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:2)
Similarly, the "physical reboot / physical console access" idea is a result of flawed hardware/firmware design (well, more a result of people using systems designed for desktop use as servers). and flawed gui-only os's (again, designed for desktop use)
Any proper server system will have at the very least a serial console, with the ability to reboot/manage/reinstall etc from it... I have a vax from the late 80s wi
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Free download... sweet! (Score:2)
Any surprised M$ VirtualPC 2004 now free? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/defaul
I've heard it doesn't totally suck anymore.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=95 [zdnet.com]
Virtual appliances (Score:2)
Basically, they have virtual machine images that are set up in various configurations for particular purposes (e.g.: firewall, web server, SQL server, etc.) that you can download and run, so instead of actually setting up software packages and worrying about it being correctly configured and secure, you can just download the virtual machine of your choice, load it up, and go.
At least that's the theo
Virtual PC (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Virtual PC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Virtual PC (Score:2)
Just in case anyone is wondering, it appears that Microsoft's VirtualPC for Mac has not been released for free as its Windows brethern have been. FWIW.
Yaz.
Re:Virtual PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Virtual PC (Score:5, Informative)
On a similar vein, knowing that Microsoft has a strong incentive and ability to get Virtual Server known and used, VMWare decided a few months ago to differentiate VMWare GSX from ESX (their enterprise server product), and to make it free as an enticement to play with server-level virtualization so they could upsell to enterprise-level virtualization.
Both companies made certain products free in an attempt to upsell to their respective primary product lines. Microsoft loses little for giving away Virtual PC because they have so little of the market as it stands. VMWare loses little for giving away Server because it made up a small portion of its own sales. Microsoft possibly gains sales of Virtual Server, while VMWare possibly gains sales of ESX.
Re:Virtual PC (Score:2)
From the looks of it, I would guess that MS is going to the same thing they did with VFP. First, move the interesting bits to a new products, as they have alrea
I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
(Sorry, it had to be said.)
Ah, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I for one... (Score:2)
(No, actually, it didn't.)
With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:2)
Technically, you are right - one could just download the VMware Server and install it - however (and I recently installed this at home) this takes some technical expertise, root/Administrator access and an hour or two. And if you do it wrong, everyone can access and screw up your vm's.
I haven't installed the player, but I'm assuming that this is a Install -> Next -> Next -> Finish type of install and you (and only you) can run a vm.
Much easier for the general public.
Mark
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:2)
The problem is, that even when you are on the machine that is hosting the VM, VMWare server still feels like you're connecting over a slow network connection. It doesn't have any of the GUI speed that VMWare Player/Workstation does. So, if you want near native GUI speed, stick with workstation/player versions. If you need remote administration
VMplayer doesn't expire (Score:2)
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Once we all get used to virtualisation, then the big companies that will start using this and see the benefits will buy the big, expensive ESX Server product.. and the support, and the tools and add-ons. For the rest of us, we get free toys so everyone's happy.
Xen is a different product, its a virtualisation tool, but it allows you to split 1 OS into several running 'instances'. VMWare is a 'wrapper' that allows you to run several different OSes side by side. Which one you'd go for depends on your requirements.
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:2, Interesting)
Xen is a different product, its a virtualisation tool, but it allows you to split 1 OS into several running 'instances'. VMWare is a 'wrapper' that allows you to run several different OSes side by side. Which one you'd go for depends on your requirements.
-----
I believe that you are incorrect there, especially about Xen.
VMWare Workstation and VMWare Server are host/guest based virtualiztion products. When you boot the computer it launches an OS (Windows, Linux, whatever), then VMWare Server runs
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:2, Informative)
VMware seems to put all the "good stuff" in Workstation and then it filters down into the GSX, ESX and now VMware Server products. So workstation is at 5.5.x and has features that are not available yet, but most importantly, the format of the virtual machines is backwards compatible with VMware Server. That is, you must create a legacy vm in workstation if you want to use it elsewhere. However, they are all upwards compatable so
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, they're not even close to opening up the vm portion of their business. They are opening a specific segment of their business, and, in turn, llikely to gain much more business. So, let's check out their listing of free, shall we?
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:2)
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:2)
Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer? (Score:2)
No, they still sell the high end ESX and a few other products. Using this as a 'gateway product'.
Apparently there was just not enough money to continue the low end product line as a commercial product. Hopefully they dont drop the low end totally.
Very cool! (Score:2)
I've thought a great idea along with this would be a super light linux distro to run as the host OS (an almost ESX server - obviously ESX has performance advantages since the kernel is running directly without an intervening OS layer)
Re:Very cool! (Score:2)
Re:Very cool! (Score:2)
What's the license agreement? (Score:2, Interesting)
Have they changed those conditions? I still don't see terms before filling out the contact info, and don't feel like filling them in again only to feel cheated again.
Re:What's the license agreement? (Score:3, Informative)
I just re-read the license. That is not a restriction in the use of VMWare Server that I could find at all.
Re:What's the license agreement? (Score:3, Informative)
Never read the betas, didnt really care since it was 'testing' anyway.
The stated upgrade path for GSX is the free 'vmware server' so it would be really hard to restrict its use and get away with it.
Re:What's the license agreement? (Score:5, Informative)
This is total BS. Their license agreement has never said that, and as a matter of fact, their FAQ [vmware.com] makes it pretty clear:
The BETA Had this restriction (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The BETA Had this restriction (Score:3, Informative)
This comes at a good time (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This comes at a good time (Score:3, Informative)
Now you can do it the opposite. Have linux be your host OS and install Windows in a VM session. As for apps, your VM sessions can see any cds that you put in your CD drive, so installing applications is a snap.
Hoped that helped
Re:This comes at a good time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This comes at a good time (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This comes at a good time (Score:4, Informative)
Be aware that you need a legitimate license/key to install/activate Windows XP; after a P2V (physical-to-virtual) conversion of a WinXP box, I had to make the obligatory call to Microsoft and promise that I didn't have -that-version- of XP installed on any other system.
Otherwise, I'd suggest just downloading VMware Server, and playing with it for a while. The first time you see the POST (power-on self test) and BIOS screens of the VM it's like you've stepped into another dimension; your mind reels at the possibilities. Tiny servers for all sorts of DNS/LDAP/SAMBA bits. Honeypots. Network IDS. Cookieless web browsing. Knoppix instances for whatever you can think of. It's endless.
Nuggets: The virtual machine shares (by default) the CD drive of the host; but you can point to an .ISO file instead. You can point the drive to a REMOTE drive, of someone who's connected in through the virtual console, so they (the remote end) can have the CD they need to install from in their hands, instead of in the host's CD drive. Same with floppies. The network bits are similar; a private net, a NAT'ed net, or a bridged net. Whatever you need.
Just install it. Let the possibilities wash over you.
\harv
--
How does this sig thing work?
The business uses of VMware are obvious... (Score:5, Interesting)
What seems to be missing is good reasons for using a VM at home. I can think of several:
1) Seems a lot easier than dual-booting (for those of us with SO's who aren't comfortable with Linux)
2) Makes a good home lab for what is rapidly becoming another standard tool of the IT trade
3) Hardware speeds are approaching the level where (except for gaming and certain compute-intensive applications) most home machines are quite powerful enough to run multiple partitions without the user even noticing a slowdown.
4) Shiney!
5) Free (as in beer)!
Feel free to add to this list - it's a long way from being complete.
Incidentally, I wonder if Windows Vista will run under VM? I'm guessing yes (as anything else would mean that Microsoft is cutting their own throat).
Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious... (Score:5, Informative)
6) Lock your significant other/children into a sand box. When they inevitably screw windows up, roll back to a previous working version.
Bryan
Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious... (Score:3, Interesting)
and it's a lot more powerful than that too. The real power of a VM imho is that you set up a machine seperately from the hardware. I like to have a little web server on my home network. I bet most slashdotters have a web server at home. I can't even remember how many times I've installed debian and configured apache. The thing is, I'm all the time taking my little server apart, taking parts out of it for m
Re:The business uses of VMware are obvious... (Score:2)
So many problems, though (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So many problems, though (Score:2)
Why it is being released for Free (Score:4, Informative)
Well, that appearently is no longer a problem and you should be able to use a standard Linux Fedora Core, or whatever installation to load windows on by next year.
VMware knows this, and is trying to prevent existing customers from leaving or looking elsewhere by giving away its products.
Interesting thoughts I have was:
1) I can install Windows workstations and servers remotely.
2) How long will it take for Microsoft to add a Service Pack update that detects windows running on a Linux box and have it start not working properly so that people use thier VM product instead, or don't have a choice.
3) Whats the performance going to be like.
VMWare is a nice product but A it is too expensive, and be it is too expensive because it turns any VM machine into a basket case performance wise.
So XeN's approach hopefully won't be any worse, maybe better since they are not trying to emulate an entire machine.
-Hack
xen rocks (Score:2)
Re:Why it is being released for Free (Score:2)
Re:Why it is being released for Free (Score:2)
Except, (a) VMware's Server and Workstation products are free, and (b) VMware runs its guests as well as virtual infrastructure. Xen has its way of dealiing with performance issues, VMware has other ways, but nobody's going to use anything that won't run the guest OS resonably fast. And once Intel's VT release arrives, do you think that VMware isn't going to u
Re:Why it is being released for Free (Score:2)
Dell 1950s and 2950s ship with VT-enabled Intel CPU's right now.
Xen is a nice hypervisor, but nothing else. They have nothing like VMotion, or even snapshots.
Re:Why it is being released for Free (Score:3, Informative)
Are you sure about that? [cam.ac.uk]
Oh Damn (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to say though, as the IT manager in a medium sized business with a limited (whose isn't?) IT budget, VMware has made my life MUCH easier.
I can buy capable dual-core servers for $500, use VMware to host several platforms on each and have budget leftover for spare hardware. I can offer more services to users, because I don't need to purchase additional hardware or request a budget increase. Security is improved, because VMware lets me separate services which should not be running on the same platform. And reliability is improved and downtime is reduced. If hardware fails, I can restore the virtual machines from backups onto spare hardware already running VMware. With the static nature of most of my servers, logs and databases are on an NFS, I can usually restore full functionality within an hour.
And you know what the best part is? I don't have to sweet talk the CFO for more money when budget time comes around again. And strangely enough, the higher ups see the better bang for the buck and my budget is increasing.
Re:Oh Damn (Score:3, Interesting)
The only downside I see to ESX 3 is they STILL won't support SATA.
Re:Oh Damn (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh Damn (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not a server. That's a desktop system. Contrary to what Dell want you to think with their entry-level servers, servers really do need redundancy, not to mention more than 512M of RAM.
A few observations (Score:4, Interesting)
Second, this is a licensing issue too, one thing I've used it for is for software I use too infrequently to purchase and has a trial period like 30 days or whatever. Create a VM, install XP in to it, and take a snapshot. Then install and run the software. You may, as I often do, only need to run it for a couple of hours and then not again for a couple of months. By then the trial period has expired. Simply restore the VM from the snapshot, re-install the trial software and you're good to go for another session. Unethical? Maybe. Flame away.
Lastly, despite the fact that I occasionally do #2, I mostly use VMware to run Fedora Core for development. I have Apache set up on it with all the bells and whistles and when I'm working on a website I use it as a test server. Runs quite well with 256 MB dedicated to it on my 1 GB main XP system.
Re:When are they going to add (Score:2, Insightful)
Offtopic? (Score:2)
Re:Offtopic? (Score:2)
Today's announcment is for the release of the 1.0 version of the Server product.
The server product uses vnc or something like it to render the output to remote machines that use the vmware console.
I'm personally very happy about today's release. I've tested each beta release and have been quite impressed.
Re:Offtopic? (Score:2)
None of the servers in my data center can do 3d acceleration worth a damn, and that really hasn't bothered me a bit.
Re:VMware Server, Workstation, GSX, etc. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:VMware Server, Workstation, GSX, etc. (Score:2, Informative)
VM runs in the background, and you connect to it using a client. In workstation, you loaded up VMWare Workstation, ran your VM, shut down your VM, then closed workstation. With VMWare server you run the VMWare client and connect to the server running on localhost or another system and then manage it as you would in workstation. When you close the server client, the VM keeps running in the background. It
Re:Some questions (Score:2)
Re:Nice to play with, but way to slow. (Score:2)
For your work you should probably use Xen, others need VMware.