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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.