On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 09:30:31AM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
cl@isbd.net wrote:
I *think* I understand what Player is now, it can be used to run 'already created' VM system images but that's all. Thinking about it it's probably not very useful except in an environment where there are a lot of pretty similar machines as, presumably, an image created on one machine will only run satisfactorily on another where the hardware is *reasonably* similar.
It always emulates the same hardware, and that's the key: no matter what your network card your virtual PC will always have a virtual AMD PCInet card (I think) in it. So the virtual machines are fully portable, between installs, between PCs, between people.
Surely only to the extent that the PCs that you're running the virtual machine on have the right *sort* of device. E.g. you're not going to get anywhere with a virtual machine that has a DVD drive unless you're running it on a machine that actually has a DVD drive.
Ah, I'm beginning (just) to see the light. The workstation product is a "run it and use it on a single machine" version of VMware, the server version is remotely accessible.
Yes, but there's more to it than that. The server version is more like running an X server and lots of thin clients, therefore its harder to do (beyond your typical user, I would expect, but I doubt you'd have a problem).
OK, but I already run an X server on my Win2k machine to view my Linux machine's desktop so, presumably, the problems one encounters are akin to the problems of getting xdm working (which can be non-trivial).
Since VMware Server is free and VMware Workstation is $189 there's no question which I'll choose! :-)
You may have problems with the USB side of things. That said you should be able to transfer the VM to player if you do.
So you're saying that you think USB may work better when run using Player than using Server? Since my purpose is to use only one machine for everything is it possible/realistic to have Server and Player running on the same machine? Or would I run Server to create my images and then shut it down and run player to use them?
Is the 'console' just a web/html interface? I've found that VMware Server for Windows requires IIS (lots of money again) which suggests that it is.
No, the console is almost exactly the same interface you get running the workstation product. It's just that you can shut it down without it killing the machines (which continue running on the server). No idea why it requires IIS (I've only installed it on Linux); maybe it has a web interface I don't know about. But the main interface is like running an X-windows client; you get the desktop of the remote PC on your PC and use it as you would if you were sat at the "virtual" PC.
Ah, OK, so it's an 'X like' thing. (With a major difference being that the 'server' and 'client' are reversed when compared with X !!)
By "installing the console" do you mean VMware Workstation?
No, the console is the front-end client bit of the server-client model. (Both a are free.) And you can use the Windows client to talk to a Linux server and vice versa should you need to. If you install the client ("console") on the same PC as the server you get something reasonably similar to the workstation, but just much harder to install and with higher overheads, and lot of features you're not using and probably without some you want.
OK, in the "something like X" context this makes sense of course.
It doesn't appear that Xen yet supports non-Linux system images to any extent yet though which rather rules it out for my requirements.
My understanding is that with the right hardware it will support Windows. I'm not an expert here, someone else might know more.
Looking at the Xen site(s) it seems that it's sort of at a beta stage if I understand it correctly.