On Thu, Sep 07, 2006 at 11:40:46PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Thu, 2006-09-07 at 22:45 +0100, cl@isbd.net wrote:
I'm not quite clear on the difference between VM Player and VM Server. If I run on a 'real' Linux box can both allow me to have virtual Linux and Win2k machines running? If they can both do this what is the actual difference? What is "creating a new VM" if it's not setting up a Win2k or Linux virtual machine?
VM Player can only boot an existing VMware system image (by default VMware creates a virtual filesystem in an image file) It can't create a new blank virtual machine into which you can install a system.
OK, I *think* I understand.
That essentially means that VM Player is essentially useless unless you also have at least VM Server somewhere to create an image. This isn't at all clear from the VM site, it sounds as if downloading VM Player is something that, by itself, might be useful. Are any of the 'ready made' system images from the VM site useful?
If I download VM Server is that all I need? I'm only going to run this on one machine, at least initially. I see then that having got it up and running on one machine I could then run the images I've created on another machine by using VM player there, is that right?
I definitely feel that it's very poorly explained on the VM site, and that 'server' isn't really a good name for VM Server.
Also (from memory I don't use it as I have a few VM Workstation licenses) you can't create new virtual devices and add them to an existing machine with VM Player.
So it's fine to use to run a virtual machine you have built with one of the other products. I think it may also be lacking some of the more clever snapshot/non persistent disk/VM Team options of Workstation and Server
Thanks for all the information and help.
One more (more directly Linux related) question:-
How difficult is it to create VM system images of 'non supported' operating systems? I run Slackware which being BSD'ish rather than SysV'ish isn't much like any of the supported Linuxs. I've found (via Google) how to install VM Server on Slackware, it's basically hacking and then unhacking the /etc/rc.d scripts.
However I'm not quite clear of the impact for creating system images. If I try and install Slackware as an image will I come across any big problems because it's "not supported" orshould it work without too much hassle? My *guess* is that there should be no problem because it's a pretty standard Linux with a normal kernel and everything so from the host's point of view will look like any other Linux OS.