[rescue] VMware (was: replacing an Ultra2)

[Joshua Boyd]

On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 09:00:35AM -0500, Chad McAuley wrote:
> 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.  

Snapshots can be accomplished by copying the entire VM on disk while it
is not running.

> For hardware consolidation purposes, I doubt most people would need
> either feature.  Server does allow you to have a single snapshot per
> VM, which allows you to have a known-good reference point to go back
> to before software/OS upgrades or configuration changes and the like.
> And Server allows you to specify which VMs get powered on when the
> host system is powered on (although IIRC you still have to power
> down/suspend/resume VMs individually), which would probably be the
> main aspect of the teams feature most folks wanting to consolidate
> hardware would want. I can definitely see Workstation-only features
> being very useful for testing/development/helpdesk environments.

You have to power down/suspend/resume VMs individually, but I believe
you can write scripts to gang multiple VMs together.

Workstation has a file sharing system that the other two don't.  With
Server I have to keep toggling back and forth between loop back and
bridged because bridged won't work when there is no network connection,
and host-only won't talk to the outside world (I suppose I could set up
routing on the host to NAT for the loopback, but I haven't gotten around
to trying to set that up).  VMWare Workstation has a mode to share file
between the system independent of the network setting.

I was going to say that it was a bummer that you had to get esx to
support both host only and bridged at once on a single VM (by two
different virtual NICs), but I just realized I can add an additional NIC
in Server, so I am trying this now.