Thanks!
Posted on 02/20/2007 10:56:28 AM PST by Echo Talon
>>Go get it. ;)
That old Greedy Company is giving away FREE software again!<<
How odd that this seems to happen when another company has created a paid niche. What a coincidence.
I have the same question. I'm looking at virtualizing my office's server and just downloaded (but haven't tried yet) VMWare Server.
Are there any big differences in functionality between the two? What about licensing - IIRC with VMWare Server you need a separate XP license for each virtual machine. MS could really jump ahead if they let you run multiple Virtual PCs with the same XP license. XP Pro licenses are running about $125-$150 on eBay right now and I'd love to save the cost of a couple of them.
What you can do is save your virtual system to a file on an internal or external storage device, and then move it to another physical computer that also has virtualization software. You can then run your virtual PC on the other machine and have your desktop, programs, files, etc. on "your" machine. Instead of your PC being a physical box, monitor, keyboard, etc., it's a file that you can run on any physical box (as long as that box has the same virtualization software).
I realize as I write this that it's not easy to explain, but it's really cool. Here's the Wikipedia entry for virtualization; it goes into more technical detail but may be even harder to understand.
I'm thinking VMWare has just about sewed up the current round of this particular market. First time I ran Vista was on VMWare, in fact. I'd love a freebie Virtual Server, though.
I'm checking out VMWare Player as we speak... what else besides the player do i need? it says i need a configuration file? WTF is that? ***scratches head***
I'm not sure what all it does.. i have only used it a couple times... And... well... others here are probably more "experts at it"
The config file tells it such things as whether you want the guest to be networked, NAT'ed, or run strictly locally, whether you want local or SAN storage (I don't know if Player is SAN capable but ESX is) how much memory to give the guest, how much CPU capacity, etc, etc. Pretty slick stuff.
Oh cool, time to download it! The only downside I can see is that it appears they've left multi-processor support only for virtual server. I wonder if it at least uses multiple cores. Aside from the obvious speed-up, that would be helpful for testing multi-core and multi-processor aware applications in a VM. Still, can't complain about that limitation in a free product.
OTOH, damn Microsoft for having the documentation in XPS format only instead of PDF. They hate using worldwide-accepted standards.
We'll have to find out as far as features and functionality how they stack up. I can tell you that I've been very happy with VMware server, Workstation, and their ESX servers. Don't really know about the Windows licensing aspects, as I mostly use vmware to virtualize test domains and stuff. We don't support windows here, so it's not an issue with me.
Hopefully some folks will chime in on licensing for windows in virtual containers.
Microsoft has decided that you can't run Vista Home as either the host or guest (the host is your normally installed OS, the guest is what runs in a virtual computer under your host). It's not a technical limitation, just that Microsoft doesn't want you to.
It'll do it, just as it will do DOS and Windows 9x. It's just not "officially supported." But with the Novell agreement I'd expect Linux to be supported pretty soon.
If youre running your servers on XP pro you have bigger problems.. And I highly doubt MS will start letting you rung three instances of their server product for free.
Echo try reading this whole thread..
http://pcs.hackaday.com/2005/10/24/how-to-vmware-player-modification/
Btw, i;m posting this from within Ubuntu VM on Vista! ;)
What's the problem? I use it basically as a file repository and central point from which to create offsite backups, as well as a host for the SQL database our contact manager uses. I have a small company with six computers on our network, not Google's IT department. XP has worked fine for those purposes.
When I upgrade the hardware next, I might like the ability to segregate the contact manager function from the data storage/backup functions, as well as segregate those from Internet access and have the ability to take my "server" home with me if I want to use it there. It would be a bonus if I could do so without extra XP licenses, but we're 100% software legal here so if I need to buy the keys I'll do it. I was just pointing out that maybe Virtual PC would allow one XP license to be used in such a manner, in which case I'd almost certainly adopt it.
WHY, it works still, I use it everyday
Can you help me with this question? I want to run XP occasionally from within Linux. Can I do that? If so, I need VMware and __?_.
You are most welcome!
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