VMWare Workstation 9 in production?

[ddrueding]

I have a client with only a few VMs and no full-time support staff. The boss' son is the best I have on site, and he is only familiar with Windows. I'm planning a machine that will be running 7 Pro with VMWare Workstation 9 hosting the production servers. This strikes me as the easiest way to run a handful of machines, but I'm already encountering some issues.

1. Reporting: I'd like to see CPU and Memory consumption reports per VM.
2. Auto start: I have the machine automatically logging on and starting VMWare Workstation, but I don't see where to make the VMs start automatically at that point.
3. Automated Backups: I'm thinking of doing this in the Windows 7 OS? Shadow copy or the like? Thougts?

Thanks!

 

[Mercutio]

I know I can auto-start a Virtual PC image and I normally handle backups natively within the VM rather than backing up the VM file itself, especially on VMs that need to be running full time. Are you sure this is a case where you need to be virtual? If you don't have any kind of worthwhile support, maybe physical machines would legitimately be a better option?

 

[ddrueding]

I do think virtual is the best way in this scenario. An office with 4 full-time employees requires 3 servers as it is currently configured. One of those servers is 2000 and can't be upgraded due to the application on it.

Right now my biggest complaint is that one of the VMs is maxing the CPU allocated to it, and I can't find out which VM.

 

[MaxBurn]

You can auto start in the VM properties for each machine I believe, I know I have seen the option in there.

As for the backups, snapshots? Not sure if those can be done on live machines or if it is enough.

Don't know about usage, I would connect to each.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm familiar with this autostart option, it was in VMWare server and ESXi, but seems to be missing from Workstation. I suspect that there is some way to do it via a script of some kind.

Snapshots will probably work fine for backups, and can probably also be scripted.

Connecting to each machine shows a relatively low CPU utilization, but looking at task manager shows that one of the vmware-vmx.exe instances is using exactly 13% of CPU utilization permanantly (process CPU time as a percentage of the system idle process). Tonight I'll be able to shut down the VMs one at a time to find out, but there should be an easier way.

 

[Handruin]

I have a client with only a few VMs and no full-time support staff. The boss' son is the best I have on site, and he is only familiar with Windows. I'm planning a machine that will be running 7 Pro with VMWare Workstation 9 hosting the production servers. This strikes me as the easiest way to run a handful of machines, but I'm already encountering some issues.

1. Reporting: I'd like to see CPU and Memory consumption reports per VM.
2. Auto start: I have the machine automatically logging on and starting VMWare Workstation, but I don't see where to make the VMs start automatically at that point.
3. Automated Backups: I'm thinking of doing this in the Windows 7 OS? Shadow copy or the like? Thougts?

Thanks!

1.) What about Windows WMI or WSMAN?
2.) Check out "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware\vmrun.exe" I only have workstaion 8.x, so I can't confirm if it still exists on 9.
3.) Possible backup solution?


Example to script:
vmrun.exe start "E:\vmware\Ubuntu 11.04 32-bit\Ubuntu 11.04 32-bit.vmx"
(This started my VM that was in a suspended state.)

 

[ddrueding]

Great link Handruin, I'll check it out on Monday. I need to get out of the office ASAP tonight (already 9PM).

 

[Bozo]

Can't you just put the *.vmx in the startup folder?

 

[ddrueding]

An interesting idea. I'll try that tomorrow night.

 

[Handruin]

Can't you just put the *.vmx in the startup folder?

I tried this by putting a shortcut of the .vmx file into my startup folder and it didn't work. It does open vmware workstation on boot, but the VM doesn't power on.

 

[Bozo]

Windows 7 Scheduled Task allows you to have things start at system start-up. You can even add a delay.