cl@isbd.net wrote:
I hadn't realised the relationship between VM Server and VM workstation, given these two then 'server' does make sense. The odd thing (that I found confusing anyway) is that VM Server is free whereas VM Worksation costs $189.
Depends on the motives for releasing it.
Xen is competition for VM Server (not workstation). Major companies using it will want support and additional features in the (much) more expensive GSX/ESX products, so there probably aren't many sales lost by giving VM Server away.
Player was released as a way to drive Workstation sales, I guess.
By the way VM Server doesn't require VM Workstation does it? VM Server is a complete standalone product?
Yes, completely separate.
Presumably then one just chooses well supported hardware for one's virtual machine - I assume it doesn't have to match the actual hardware on the host machine does it?
The hardware is (more or less) fixed. You can find the specs on the VM website. Ie it always emulates the one type of ethernet card, the one video hardware, the one SCSI (or IDE) disk interface, etc. You can choose whether your disks are (virtual) SCSI or IDE connected, and you can decide whether to have an ethernet card (or more than one), but that's about it.
However, so many distro developers will have made use of VMWare in the past that the vast majority ship with drivers for VM.
Yes, that's what I assumed it meant in this context, slightly different from the situation with VM Server where the installation actually interacts with the OS it's being installed on.
Not sure what you mean here.
Both server and workstation (and player) are applications which sit on top of a "host" O/S, and they'll only run if that O/S works as a host. The range of choices here is wide but not exhaustive.
Once running all products emulate a complete PC. That PC is "built" from a fairly narrow set of (virtual) hardware, although which bits you select (and how many of them) is up to you. That PC is a standard x86 and will support any x86-based O/S that has drivers for its set of hardware. Here the range of options is much wider.
Presumably there must be *some* correlation between the emulated hardware and the host PC hardware. I.e. you can't emulate an NIC unless the underlying hardware actually has a network connection of some sort (or at least the emulated NIC won't work unless you have an actual network connection).
Yes and no.
You can run a virtual network between your host PC and your virtual PC(s) without having a real network card. Your (host) PC will have its own IP address on the VMWare virtual network interface, and each VM will also have their own IP addresses, and you can talk between them. If you have a real network then you have more options (like the virtual machines bridged to the real network so other PCs on your LAN can access them as if they were real PCs).
You can similarly have a CD/DVD drive in the virtual machine mapped to your physical drive, but you can also map it to an ISO (very useful for VM installs) so you don't actually need a physical drive. The same applies to floppy disk drives.
You would really benefit from downloading the 30-day trial of the workstation product and getting your head around these things - it's much clearer with one in front of you than "in theory". Then try server and see how it compares.
[next email...] 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).
Yes, in that its just a bit more complicated. VM Workstation is download and install, where VM Server is download, read the docs, install. Don't get me wrong: it's not hard to install, just not as simple as Workstation. That is at least 50% because its harder to get you rhead around what its doing, which is why I say try workstation first.
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?
I have no experience of USB on the server. Since the VMs it creates are the same as those created by workstation I guess it must support USB. It probably isn't quite as seamless though, or at least its just more complicated. (Consider server and console on different PCs: which USB ports should it use? You don't want to go to the server to plug in your thumb drive, nor do you want to connect your printer to your local PC.)
VMWare player will not install on a machine that has workstation installed, so I've never tried it. Whether it will install alongside server I don't know. However, I do have workstation and console on the same PC, and I'm pretty sure I can run them both together if I wish (I'd probably need some more RAM though!)
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 !!)
"Like", but not "the same as". Not sure why you say the client/server are reversed though: when I run console on my desktop it acts as a window into the virtual machine running on the server. The virtual machine always runs on the server.
Looking at the Xen site(s) it seems that it's sort of at a beta stage if I understand it correctly.
I think so. So I recommend looking at the hardware (specifically CPU type) requirements, and using that when building your new box, but stick to VM for now.
[[Non-techie overview of Xen:
Xen runs as a "hypervisor" at the highest CPU level, with its virtual machines running at a lower level. However, the highest level is traditionally reserved for the O/S, which is what Xen is, but its also what the virtual machine O/S's are, and they also expect to run at that level. Unlike VM, Xen runs the virtual machines directly on the real hardware, so this causes a problem as the virtual machines conflict with Xen. (With VM the O/S sees a virtual CPU so there is no problem.)
Now if you have the source code for the O/S you can change it so it runs happily at the next level down. Hence you can run Linux (with a suitable kernel), but not Windows, using any Xen install.
However, some new CPUs have a new, higher, level which allows Xen to sit there and still run the virtual O/S at the level it expects. This allows an unpatched O/S to work, such as any Linux (without needing a specific kernel), or indeed Windows.
That's all from memory, and probably over simplified and even wrong in places, but its why I suggest checking the Xen website for suitable CPUs. ]]