VMware

[norm]

Anyone using it or doing any sort of virtualization at the moment?

[RaTix]

I recently tried to setup Mac OS X 10.8 for testing purposes on a VMWare setup. Kind of worked. Lack of RAM caused it to lock up after a bit into using it though. Got it installed, and Even Office for Mac installed before it locked up. Could have also been my chipset that was causing the issues too though.

If asking about other virtualization as well, I mainly use Hyper-V on server 2008/12 for the game servers and other stuff. Have about 4-5 hyper-Vs running.

Did you need help with something or are you just taking a census on VM users? lol

[norm]

Taking a census

1


lol


Thinking of trying the VMware's trial offer and messing around with that. I spent yesterday cleaning out a hard drive, organizing files and backing things up.

I wanted to know who to bug in case I had issues with it and talk some things over with. VMware has a cert path that starts out with a free cert, maybe a cert for dummies is a better name, called VCA-DCV. It's for VSphere 5.


Thought I would give it a go and see where it takes me. I can get VSphere for 60 days and Workstation for 30. I'm thinking Workstation might be the best for getting my feet wet. Right now I've been watching some training videos and reading a few things.

My knowledge of virtualization is pretty small with a great belief that it's mostly voodoo..lol

[RaTix]

I haven't messed around with VSphere at all. But same concept as Hyper-V role on win server.

You should probably mess with Workstation first. All vSphere does, is essentially manage multiple VM workstations. So it's more of a server product that you would want a dedicated machine for.

All you need to know for the basics of VM, is allocating the resources of your PC to the VM. Whatever RAM you allocate to the VM, you take from your main OS. So if your system has 4GB, and you assign a VM 2GB. Both main system and VM are using 2GB then.
I would just setup a workstation running whatever OS flavor you want to toy with and get a feel for it first. Also, check out TPB for "evaluation" copies.

[Cottoinc]

I have use VM's for testing OS setups at work and for Linux distros at home for downloading things that I might be dangerous for my PC like torrents.

The city I work for uses VMware to for all the desktops in the main building and is trying to push it down to the outlying office around the city but from what I hear it is a pain to work with and the cost is the same at the end for a normal PC life cycle program.

[Kamui]

I have used VMware in my System admin course when I was in school. We installed.....Windows server 2003 for the course.

At home I utilized it for experimental purposes. I once tried to install Windows '98 for the purpose of playing Star wars Shadows of the Empire on the PC. However I had no luck as the OS would load up, But not make it to desktop.
Another was Ubuntu, This was a heavy experiment to play Phantasy Star Online(That I pushed aside, But wanna try it again) on the Dreamcast online without the Lan adapter(That cost $200 on ebay), But with a 56k adaptor fooling the computer into to thinking it's utilizing a different connection.
Sega May have shutdown their official servers a long time ago, But there exist a private server still for the 1999 game that people to this day still play lol. If I had the money i'd buy a 200 dollar adapter lol.

[hecx2370]

Are you talking about the desktop or server virtualization? Virtualization is the absolute bomb. I was a skeptic at first, but not anymore. If you're talking about server virtualization, the most difficult part is the networking portion, but don't let that stop you from implementing it. The technology is amazing. You can get all sorts of information out on the net. We have about 200+ servers virtualized servers across six hosts. One note though, SQL is still better off running on one host. VM's can move from one host to the next without you blinking an eye. Let me now if you have any particular questions. The desktop version is pretty straight forward.

[Cottoinc]

Hecx I'm sure it is just poor implementation by the city ICS department I have heard the good and the bad. Your ILS is also virtualized and is hosted in Syracuse NY. But when 250 people try to watch youtube, browse facebook, and play music on a 30Mb pipe it slows down and goes to shit.

[hecx2370]

The physical backbone network is very important in VMWare. The system that runs our virtual environment, called vblock has an 80 Gbps link back to our core switch. Everything is taken into account, even the order of firewall rules. I review my firewalls frequent to ensure the most used access control list are placed on top. I was once complemented on it by an engineer. The more trunks you have to your switch the better.

[hecx2370]

Hecx I'm sure it is just poor implementation by the city ICS department I have heard the good and the bad. Your ILS is also virtualized and is hosted in Syracuse NY. But when 250 people try to watch youtube, browse facebook, and play music on a 30Mb pipe it slows down and goes to shit.

One thing that I neglected to mention is the web filtering and firewall device used can be an issue. We only have 10 Mbps our New Jersey office and its decent. We recently implemented a inner core routing link. What this does is have all backbone traffic communicating on one port channel while everything else goes over another. This has optimized our network traffic across six switches on each floor in our New York office. It's a lot snappier now.

[RegentOne]

Used VMWare Ver 3 and 5 for the past 3.7 years until Server 2012 which comes with a better Hyper V product. I know a good bit about VMWare and so does the folks I work with. We used the client version of VMWare and it works great with Windows 7 and below but has issues with Server 2012, SCCM 2007, System Center 2012, and Windows 8.

[hecx2370]

That's Microsoft for ya. I played with HyperV years back, but wasn't too happy with it, especially backing up the image. The vm had to be down in order to back it up. It was a shame that I wasn't surprised that Microsoft rushed this to market before really thinking it out! So far I've had no issues with VMWare and the infrastructure that we run it on. However it feels like every other week some disk seems to go on me.

[RaTix]

I'm not sure if you had tried to RTM of 2008 or what, but I have no such problems with Hyper-V on Server 2008 R2. You can easily take snapshots of the VMs at any time without them being down.

[hecx2370]

nah .. I haven't. I wish I had the time to mess around with research and testing like I use to.