VMware

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Hi guys happy new year, been looking at vmware as a lot of people are talking about it. First off is it the best software in it's field to use or is there better software that does a similar job?

I basically thought that VMware was just software to allow you to run OS's for testing and such but looking on the VMware website it's mainly used (if I've got this right) for having multiple OS's running on servers for actual business use. Is it any good and does anyone actually go down this route of using it in a business environment? If so whats the performance like?

 

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There are basically two main products out there for running Virtual Machines VMWare and Microsofts Virtual PC.

There are others, but these are the two that are the most widely used.

For the most part both of these products are used for testing environments, Labs, Etc, as they offer a good alternative to actually having to buy lots of hardware.

The use of virtual machines in a production environment is something that I personally have never come across, but I do know that both VMWare and Microsoft have enterprise level product to do this type of thing, these are VMWares ESX Server and also GSX Server whilst Microsoft has Virtual Server.

 

Cheers for that simon, so basically they can be used for business use on servers but are mainly used for testing purposes.

Out of the two that you mentioned which would you recommend?

 

I work for a VMWare partner and I can happily say that VMWare in the enterprise is an excellent choice for a fair chunk of most company servers (business dependant ofcourse), you wouldnt always want to put something thats transaction heavy onto one due to the disk access and SAN access required, as generally the ESX server would have one mezzanine to share between all its virtual servers

however anything thats not heavy on the CPU or transaction based would work fine on a VM rig if you ask me. just recently finished rolling out a VMWare Blade solution for a big client, 24 blades with vmware on each, running a total of about 50 servers, consolidated down from over 75, the system works great so far, with no noticable performance hit, remember if you follow best practice and have different services on seperate servers (that means no DC/Exchange/SQL/AV system on one server) then these servers are not using thier processor or disk that often, and these are the examples that VMWare shines (I wouldnt put a heavily used exchange or SQL system on them just yet though)

 

Cheers for the advice guys much appreciated...

 

Well, I personaly use MS VirtualPC, but that is only because I get it 'free' through my works licensing.

If you were looking to buy one of the two then I would say that it depends on what you're going to use it for.

If you are wanting to run Linux VM's then go for VMWare as it supports linux, whereas VirtualPC doesn't, although you can get them to run with some 'tweaking'.

I believe though that out of the two Virtual PC is the cheaper option, but don't quote me on this.

HTH.