[rescue] VMware (was: replacing an Ultra2)

[ajones]

rescue-request at sunhelp.org wrote:
> Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:00:35 -0500
> From: "Chad McAuley" <chizad at gmail.com>
>
> On 4/15/07, Michael-John Turner <mj at turner.org.za> wrote:
>   
>> I haven't compared Server and Workstation lately, but I'm not quite sure
>> how they justify charging for Workstation when Server is free and
>> (theoretically) offers more features...
>>
>> -mj
>>     
>
> Depending on what your virtualization needs are, Workstation has some
> features that Server does not.  Two that come to mind off the top of
> my head are multiple snapshots (although I'm assuming this is actually
> technically possible in Server, just without the pretty GUI to manage
> the snapshot tree). and teams.  The teams feature allows you to set up
> a multiple tier network from whatever VMs you have set up.  This
> allows you to power on/off and suspend/resume the VMs as one unit, as
> well as restrict bandwidth between the different tiers.
>   
VMware Server supports multiple snapshots just fine, albeit in a less 
than user friendly fashion.  It does not support snapshot *trees*.  You 
can't trivially branch snapshots off of one another.   The VMW daemon 
will complain about not being able to parse its log files or something 
along those lines.

While I'm on the subject, ESX has vastly better I/O performance than 
Server.  It has an ugly little filesystem driver for the host which maps 
to an ugly little block device driver for the guest.  It also has much 
nicer virtual networking.

One thing I've wondered about but never tried under ESX is SCSI bus 
arbitration for shared SCSI.  Under Server, the feature is available, 
but practically useless due to performance concerns.