title: VMware Server 2.0 & The Good Life link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/vmware-server-20-the-good-life/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 451 created: 2008/10/04 08:25:17 created_gmt: 2008/10/04 08:25:17 comment_status: open post_name: vmware-server-20-the-good-life status: publish post_type: post

VMware Server 2.0 & The Good Life

VMware’s server product has been part of my environment both at work and home since the GSX days. I pioneered the use of both GSX Server and Workstation by developers and sysadmins on both Linux (for free) and Windows (for $$$).

Although lots of vendors have entered the virtualization space, I’ve stuck with VMware because of the high quality, reliability and flexibility of its products.

One of my colleagues at work recently converted a bunch of test VMware Server machines to the free VMware ESXi platform. Running as the O/S of the machine with a minimal CPU and memory footprint, it’s probably the most efficient of the company’s products.

But with the release of VMware Server 2.0, just a couple of weeks ago I decided to move all my machines to it, instead of ESXi, because the former still runs in user space and still allows the host to double as a workstation. There is a penalty paid in both CPU and memory overhead, but given my particular use case this was acceptable.

Note: Although I’ve been working with 2.0 for a few days now there are still two things I have not figured out how to do: 1) Upgrading a perfectly good 1.x image without creating problems; and 2) getting USB-1 devices like my Palm to connect up. Both of these are minor issues for me at the moment, but could present real difficulties for others. If you’re going to experiment, then making a file system copy of the target image is highly recommended.

Installation was easy. I used the .rpm distribution, which ran without error. The trusty old vmware-config.pl script is used to configure the server, and apart from questions dealing with the setup of the web based administration servlet, it worked pretty much as in previous versions.

The nice thing about 2.0 is that it looks and feels a lot like ESXi from a sysadmin point of view. Gone is the old gui console, replaced by the VMware Infrastructure (VI) Web Access application that runs in the Java application server. This can be accessed using any browser, and allows for both SSL and non-SSL (SSL-only is the default for remote connections).

The VI app allows you to launch multiple consoles for any Virtual Machine (VM) guest, using a web browser plugin that installed quickly and smoothly on both Linux and Windows.

Like VMWare’s enterprise administration tools, VI gives you control not only of all virtual devices connected and/or connectable to the guests, but also provides metrics for resources used by both the underlying host and each guest. Which is what “the good life” part is about — lame as it sounds now that I think about it.

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