Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
Looks and acts completely different than previous versions.
http://www.vmware.com/download/server/
Bozo :jokecolor:
http://www.vmware.com/download/server/
Bozo :jokecolor:
New VMWare Server
- Thread starter Bozo
- Start date
ddrueding
Fixture
Yup, it behaves a lot like ESXi, but it isn't. And isn't compatible with Virtual Center, which is awesome. Looks like I'll be spending some money with them soon; their policy of giving away the low-end stuff is paying off.
For my software testing using a virtual PC here on my desktop machine is there any differences I need to know about or any neat new stuff that could help me out? I thought the old stuff they were giving away was perfect, don't know how much better it can get.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
One of the first things I noticed was the boot up time of the host. With earlier versions the GUI would come up, and then there was 1-2 minute delay until the networks were ready. Now, when the GUI comes up, the network is ready too.
I also seems like they improved the VMWare tools.
The nice part is VMWare Server 2 will remove any old versions and install itself without losing any guest OSs.
Bozo :jokecolor:
I also seems like they improved the VMWare tools.
The nice part is VMWare Server 2 will remove any old versions and install itself without losing any guest OSs.
Bozo :jokecolor:
ddrueding
Fixture
It is neat; the web UI is cool, and it seems to play nicer with the hosts resources. But it isn't nearly as fast or slim as ESXi. That is just awesome.
ddrueding
Fixture
For the past 2 hours I've been discovering an issue with virtualization. When the NIC fails, many servers go with it. Time to explore clustering with redundancy.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
I usually assign one NIC per OS.
Bozo :jokecolor:
Bozo :jokecolor:
ddrueding
Fixture
I don't have enough NICs for that. Each ESXi server is pulling 5-8 machines.
ddrueding
Fixture
As a plus, ESXi seems to not care about hardware at all. I pulled the harddrive from the machine (a Q6600) and dropped it into a spare X2 3800+, and it spun right up. The only thing I had to do was tell the VMs that they had moved hardware, and to not change their install IDs. Very sweet.
ddrueding
Fixture
Looking to consolidate our servers to a pair that could each handle everything in an emergency. I'm looking at these:
TYAN B2933G14S2M 1U Barebone Server - Retail
2x AMD Opteron 2376 Shanghai 2.3GHz 45nm Socket F 75W Quad-Core Server Processor
8x Kingston 4GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC Registered
Intel SSDSA2MH080G1C5 80GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD)
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM
Not bad for $3k.
TYAN B2933G14S2M 1U Barebone Server - Retail
2x AMD Opteron 2376 Shanghai 2.3GHz 45nm Socket F 75W Quad-Core Server Processor
8x Kingston 4GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC Registered
Intel SSDSA2MH080G1C5 80GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD)
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM
Not bad for $3k.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
I hope the data on the single Samsung drive won't be accessed very often, otherwise your hard drive will go crazy and be a HUGE bottleneck, no matter the 32GB of RAM. Add spindles.
ddrueding
Fixture
The Samsung is purely a staging area for backups. All the running VMs will be on the SSD, with scheduled clones to the Samsung at night. This is part of a successful backup strategy I've used for a while. Every machine backs itself up to a local store during the "maintenance window" at night*. Then they can all take turns copying from the offline store to the backup servers.
*The nightly down time here is much shorter than at other offices. Because of varying construction schedules (night work, early morning deliveries, midnight bid deadlines), I can only allow degraded performance from about 2AM to 4AM. This isn't enough time to get all the data to the backup servers, but it is enough time for them all to simultaneously back themselves up to themselves, then they have the remaining 22 hours to get that data to the offline backup server.
*The nightly down time here is much shorter than at other offices. Because of varying construction schedules (night work, early morning deliveries, midnight bid deadlines), I can only allow degraded performance from about 2AM to 4AM. This isn't enough time to get all the data to the backup servers, but it is enough time for them all to simultaneously back themselves up to themselves, then they have the remaining 22 hours to get that data to the offline backup server.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I don't think I like the new version of VMware Server. It's too damned much work to import a VM onto another host and I don't like that it's browser based, if only because browsers sometimes crash. The older software was a lot simpler.
ddrueding
Fixture
The new software more closely integrates with the rest of their software (ESXi, Virtual Infrastructure, etc). And if you are using them, then using the VMWare converter was already happening.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
The new VMware software is very, very, very clunky, then.
Agreed, and for some reason I crashed firefox a couple times getting the viewer window installed and working. It works fine now but I think the older interface was slicker and much more trouble free.
Is this just a narrowing of development efforts and this version is using the same code they are using in other upend products? This stinks of more of a money saving and consolidation effort rather than any improvement.
Vista/Server2008 support is nice to finally have though.
ddrueding
Fixture
If you are only using VMWare Server, than it is absolutely worse. If you are using their whole suite of applications, then it is nice to have the same interface for all of them. I didn't have the "clunky" experience, or the crashes, so I can't comment on that.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I use VMware to demo things on my classroom PCs, particularly old versions of Windows. This lets me show the progression of features from, say Windows NT to Vista. In Server 1.0, it's a very simple matter to import an image onto another machine and start it. On the new version, it took me 40 minutes to figure out how to do that. Server v 1 has a very simple set of controls, to the point that I can introduce the idea of a virtual machine manager and immediately begin working with it. I'd have to devote a couple hours of class time to explain the 2.0 product if I wanted students to actually work with it.
No thanks.
No thanks.
ddrueding
Fixture
I haven't used it, but isn't that what the VM Player is for? Is it any better for your purposes?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I would prefer to give my students the opportunity to load OSes themselves. Like I said, it used to be simple and now it is not.
ddrueding
Fixture
VirtualBox is probably better for that purpose.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Shutting down your VM instead of just closing its window is a big help with that. The machine I'm using right now has a total of maybe 20MB RAM devoted to VMware Server.
Of course, that's the old, good version.
Of course, that's the old, good version.
Yeah this is a little worse than that, below. Not as bad as I initially thought though. Don't forget tomcat is part of it there for that web interface, and my one defined VM is stopped. I am just a little disturbed that with only firefox and trillian open I am sitting on a whole gig of memory in use for this computer and found this.
I guess we can add a bit of a memory hog to the list.
I guess we can add a bit of a memory hog to the list.
ddrueding
Fixture
Yup, I don't like how it sinks it's claws into everything all the time, but I think they all do that.
On the up side all that money I spent on the Q9550 and 4gig of memory pays off; running two VM's with a gig of memory and a CPU each fly on this thing. Too bad work won't pay for this, they sort of expect me to do all this software testing on a three year old D610 laptop with a mobile 1.8 and 1 gig of memory, oh well...
On this new version I am rather annoyed at the whole datastore location thing. In the old one you set the location of the VM image while you are creating the VM and it can be anywhere, but in this you have to first set up your datastore somewhere else and then you can create the VM and use a place inside that datastore. Liked the old way and doing it all at once in one place better.
On this new version I am rather annoyed at the whole datastore location thing. In the old one you set the location of the VM image while you are creating the VM and it can be anywhere, but in this you have to first set up your datastore somewhere else and then you can create the VM and use a place inside that datastore. Liked the old way and doing it all at once in one place better.