VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘ubuntu’

It’s good to see more and more of the various Linux distributions prepackage enhancements that benefit the operating system when running in virtual machines. This also makes life a whole lot easier for the administrator configuring the virtualized OS. Building VMs is already fast in comparison to physical servers, but having to take the time to modify config files to get a usable screen resolution can get on your nerves real quick! Anyone who has ever built a Linux VM over the past several years has most likely experienced Xorg (screen resolution) problems and knows what I am talking about.

Today, thanks to VMware making a large part of the Linux version of the VMware Tools open source, the latest distribution of Ubuntu (8.04 or Hardy Heron) includes the xserver-xorg-video-vmware package in it’s core installation. Hopefully the other popular distributions are doing the same. Frankly, I haven’t had the chance to explore CentOS, Fedora or Red Hat, but recent announcements seem to indicate that the same virtulized enhancements are taking place for those distros too.

So, what this means is that you Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Perlow of blogs.zdnet.com has written a great feature comparison post of the 2 best multi-platform, free virtualization products in my opinion – Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6 and VMware Server 2.0 Beta 2.

Personally, I used to run VMware Server 1.x on my XP notebook until I was tempted to try VMware’s first beta of version 2.0. Although not an officially supported OS for any version of VMware Server, my use of Server on XP was for basic research and test purposes, and I chose the free version over VMware Workstation. Like most, after the switch to 2.0 beta 1 I experienced frustration with the web interface. Now, since I discovered Sun’s xVM VirtualBox 1.6 seamless feature and the ability to run virtual machines created in VMware’s .vmdk format, I have switched. I am extremely happy with VirtualBox, and I even consider it to be a closer open-source replacement for VMware Workstation with features that rival the still in beta version of Workstation 6.5. I also use VirtualBox 1.6 on both 64 bit and 32 bit Ubuntu at home.

Jason’s comparison focuses on using the products in a true virtualization host capacity, and he provides some interesting performance analysis. Read the rest of this entry »

The VMware Guest Operating System Installation Guide is downloadable as a .pdf or available online. The document’s “About this Book” section summarizes it’s purpose as follows:

“This manual, the Guest Operating System Installation Guide, provides users of VMware® ESX Server, VMware® GSX Server, VMware® Server, VMware® ACE, VMware® Workstation, and VMware Fusion^TM information about choosing and installing guest operating systems for VMware virtual machines.”

There are sections of installation instructions for every past and present operating system that is supported. What I am posting from this document is a very helpful table that is a quick reference of what VMware products support which VM operating systems. This table has been copied from the online version of the guide.

This table makes it very easy to answer questions like:  Read the rest of this entry »

Innotek VirtualBox is a free, open-source alternative to VMware workstation. Aquired by Sun Microsystems earlier this year, VirtualBox has quickly become one of the leading developer platforms for the desktop with current features that rival even VMware’s latest version 6.5 currently in beta testing. I have used VirtualBox in the past, but because I had not used it in over almost over a year I was not aware of the latest features in the most recent releases. The feature that specifically caught my attention was the seamless window integration of Microsoft Windows virtual machines. Like VMware Workstation and Fusion’s Unity feature, VirtualBox allows Windows applications in the VM to pop out of the VM session making it available from the host operating system’s desktop.

Quoting from Sun’s announcement: Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s edition could be called “a thing that makes you go hmmm” since I only have a single blog post linked. This post is about why one particular blogger thinks Vista is better than Mac OS X, and how he uses virtualization as one of his arguing points. Just to set the record straight, I do not run Vista on any of my work or personal systems and I do not own a Mac. However, I do know enough about both operating systems and virtualization to say “hmmmm”. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past several weeks I have attended VMware’s latest VMLive web seminar about VDI as well as a local partner training session. Both the web seminar and the training session provided some great information about the new Virtual Desktop Manager product or VDM 2. The following post is a summary of my notes and some of the slides from the web session. Click on the slides to view a larger version.

VDI & VDM Architecture

With VDM 2 the VDI architecture is scalable and flexible. Multiple installations of VDM allow for larger numbers of users and desktops. Securing virtual desktop access from the Internet is also possible.

When you install VDM 2 you have three choices for the Desktop Manager installation type:

• Standard (first Connecton Server),
• Replica (copies of first server) servers
• Security Server – ssl tunneling, 2 factor authentication – can be installed in DMZ

VDM installs Read the rest of this entry »

Leo Raikhman left me a comment, which lead me to his Leo’s Ramblings blog, which in turn, taught me about another open source monitoring tool for VI3 called Unnoc. In his post Using unnoc to monitor your ESX servers Leo explains why Unnoc is his favorite over other open source monitoring solutions:

“Let me just say that I hate complicated configurations which is why I immediately discarded cacti and nagios – the other two contenders for free ESX monitoring. Also, having used both, the complexity of their data gathering left a lot to be desired. Unnoc is simple and it works because it was designed to do a limited number of things.”

Leo’s post walks you through the installation and configuration of Unnoc on Ubuntu.

Here’s more about the tool From Unnoc.org: Read the rest of this entry »