Good:
The purpose of this thread is exposures the major virtualization software that exist in the market, together with their pros and cons in my experience. We also want to open the thread, with your experience, complete information and say about your experience.
* VMWare Workstation.
Very good virtualization software aimed at home PC's. It offers good performance and great potential in terms of virtual operating systems. So far, no operating system I have been resisted.
Can be installed and ready to function in almost all operating systems Windows and Linux.
When you finish installing the virtualized Operating System (O, also called, Guest) need to install the vmware tools for that operating system. These utilities are no more than the drivers virtual network, mouse and VGA, along with some utilities to be able to copy data between the virtual machine and the host, among other things.
This application is not free. Today, it costs around 189 dollars while the version for Linux as the version for windows. That if there is a 'player' of virtual machines, called vmware player if it is free, but you can not create machines, just executing them.
* VMWare ESX Server.
It is the business of the previous version. You can install multiple operating systems to coexist on the same machine simultaneously, sharing resources and shape memory transparent to the user. In addition, systems have load-balancing, you can move virtual machines from one server to another in an almost instant with no loss of connectivity, backup and migrate virtual machines to actual and vice versa. Otherwise, it has multiple applications management and resource optimization.
This server (More than an application, is a server), it installs itself on an operating system based on Linux and there is no possibility to implement it on windows or on another linux that is already running.
Does the sticks? It is very expensive. A basic configuration, depending on the number of processors that handle the server is more expensive or cheaper, can cost around 6000 euros. Hence going to rise, if ordered or more modules are installed on computers with multiple processors.
* VirtualBox.
It is a multi-platform software, quite good, from what I saw, which allows you to install almost all operating systems. In this case, I have only had problems when trying to virtualize Windows 98 as it does not exist Guest adittions for that operating system and therefore can not operate in a network or with a decent screen resolution.
Except that, the memory management is very good and excellent performance in both windows and linux.
The snag is that it has few options for management and monitoring of the resources of virtual machines.
While VirtualBox's website said it was an optimal system for both teams and for domestic business environments, I think it does not give the size before the VMWare ESX Server. It is rather less and with far fewer options.
Recently it has bought Sun Microsystems, but for now remains free. Possibly, if the thing goes well, the application starts to improve to the level currently VMWare, lest we forget that goes far ahead in terms of development.
* XEN Xen
Xen is an open and free, although it has a premium version, which is included, to my knowledge, in the distributions of SUSE Linux and Red Hat.
From my experience with him, I feel sad and a system that does not reach the height of heels to any of the systems virtualization that I mentioned earlier.
Here at work, most recently, we bought some IBM servers with SUSE 10, we've upgraded to the 10 SP1. We have also updated since the last repositories of Xen patches and, despite that, I have not run any operating system in virtual terms. Installing a Windows 2000 virtual hell was littered with blue and facilities screenshots aborted. When I finally got to install the operating system, the Spanish keyboard did not work either shot.
Always speaking from my experience, at the time that I get multiple incompatibilities with hardware, which in principle is certified by Xen.
* Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2.
A few weeks ago I heard that Microsoft had released this application and could be downloaded for free. Can be installed on multiple Windows systems and, apparently, few offer more guarantees than others. I install a Windows 2003 server and the experience was not very good. I tried to install SP1 on virtual SUSE 10 and I was blocked on the home screen of SUSE, that is, not get to start the installation. The truth is that I did not further investigated, but it gives me more confidence VMWare and VirtualBox.
* Microsoft VirtualPC.
I've seen out there that there is Virtual PC, but I have not tried. I would appreciate if someone is aware of the functioning of this system, so communicate.
Anyway, this is all we know about the different systems virtualization. I hope that among all make this thread a good tutorial virtualization.
A greeting.
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Originally Posted by barclay
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