VMware Workstation 6 virtually trounces the competition

Quoting: The lack of a FOSS license unjustifies any price tag for some of us - dcparris

It doesn't bother me at all, I use VMWare Server to run an email and DNS server on the home network, and the Windows shop I work at is starting to use it to run terminal servers and the like on our client networks.

The data is not locked up, so I can access the data within the VM from other machines, or copy it to a SAN or NAS, or use an external drive for storage...I don't find myself locked into Workstation just to access the documents I created in a word proc. As long as what I create remains mine, I don't mind proprietary in this case, for this is more like a car to take me places...it's an OS caddy that allows me to have several machines running instead of just one.

Sure, Free would be better, but as long as I have free access to my machines, I don't care. And since I don't store any data on the actual VM itself, VMWare could decide to lock it up with an update and I wouldn't miss a beat.

Like I said - for *some* of us. :-)

Well if FOSS isn't available, how about just free?

As the article mentions, both VMplayer and VMserver are free. Both are free downloads, but you have to register to get a registration key for Server. Since I had signed up for an evaluation copy of Workstation a long time ago, they already had my address, so I went ahead and got keys for both Linux and Windows.

They don't have all the features of VMware Workstation, but they're perfect for just trying things out. You can even run them on Slackware if you do some basic research before you start. :)

As far as I can tell, VMware is the best of breed in the field. The other folks stuff pales in comparison, including the FOSS stuff. That doesn't mean the FOSS stuff isn't good enough for some uses, of course, merely that VMware is better. VMware has also always been Linux and FOSS friendly. Yes, they're proprietary, but they're the type of proprietary company we can live with.

Quoting: Like I said - for *some* of us. :-)

Gotcha. :0)

Quoting: That doesn't mean the FOSS stuff isn't good enough for some uses, of course, merely that VMware is better

Overall, I agree, however if you need to right light apps or web servers on a VM, it's hard to beat OpenVZ and its commercial sister Virtuozzo. They divide up the kernel into VMs that are the same as the underlying OS, so you can run 20-30 instances of a server on a single beefy box, whereas that load would just kill VMWare. However, most folks don't use it like that, and VMWare is the bomb in every other case.

> ...so you can run 20-30 instances of a server on a single beefy box,

I'll try to remember that in case any asks for recommendations. Thanks.

Quoting: I'll try to remember that in case any asks for recommendations. Thanks.

No problem. They tried to displace VMWare at my work with it, but it's not designed for the usage we're giving it. Whatever the underlying OS is, the VMs are. Our main reason for considering VMs for our clients (small businesses with less than 3 servers, typically) is to virtualize an old box that they need to keep around for an old app. Put it on a VM and it can reside on new hardware. However, if the base OS is 2003 Enterprise, the VMs have to be 2003 Enterprise, so a Windows 2000 or NT box won't run. You also can't have various patch levels, so if you have one app that needs SP1 and nothing further, then the base machine and all VMs have to be SP1. That's bad for us, and they found that out after trying to "port" the VMWare machines on our virtual host over to it. OY. They screwed that up. Shoulda asked me first :) or at least tried it on a test box. Never do that on a production machine...we're still trying to piece together the SQL Server that was on one of the VMs. Geez...blasted Windows admins! Can't teach them a thing....

> OY. They screwed that up.

Ouch. I can see that. It sounds great for hosting providers and that type of thing though. But most places want to run different OS'es on the same hardware, which it won't do.