Using VMware Server on Linux

[PhilGQ]

I want to use VMware Server on Linux, Now I know its more awkward to install it on Ubuntu than it should be. Its easy to install on Windows but Vista being the hog that it is makes the whole system freeze when I start a guest. It worked good on XP but I only have the one license and would rather save it to use as a guest.

So I am thinking either fedora or openSuse will be the best due to there business cousins Redhat and SLED bing the place this stuff is aimed at and VMware do an RPM version where they don't do a DEB.

Does anyone know if either of these is good for the task. I need the host to be 64bit so I can use all the RAM. I do have a 64bit Vista disk which I am yet to use so this would give more RAM so there is an option there as well but I would prefer the open source route given a choice in the matter.

I have already dismissed using Virtual box as it doesn't support 64bit guests. I will hopefully running a oscommerce guest a forum guest and a windows desktop guest and maybe an Ubuntu Desktop guest.

The hardware is an X2 3800 + 6GB Ram. Hopefully to be boosted to 8GB Quad core when I have spare cash.

 

[dave-lew99]

VmWare Server was a doddle to install on Ubuntu i found. Isn't it in the repositories now?

I just checked and if you enable all the repositories properly you can simply do

apt-get install vmware-server

And it will work.

 

[Cob]

It always freezes Vista for about a minute after starting a guest, but it always returns to normal (it eats all your memory for that minute, and then you have to wait for everything else to be read from the page file and be loaded back into memory).

I'm running two Ubuntu VMs on x64 Vista without any issues.

 

[BruceLee]

We currently use Redhat at work to run a couple of 64 bit VMWare servers, each box has around 15 virtual w2k boxes running on it, used for our test rigs. Works quite well, not had any issues with it personally but I dont often do any work on it.
Commiting changes to disks is a real tedious job though, takes forever on each virtual box, and this is running on RAID'ED 15k rpm SCSI drives. Otherwise its quite stable, in the 6 months we have had it I've not known any issues with it.

 

[PhilGQ]

VmWare Server was a doddle to install on Ubuntu i found. Isn't it in the repositories now?

I just checked and if you enable all the repositories properly you can simply do

apt-get install vmware-server

And it will work.

Its not in the repo any longer, It used to be in the "commercial" which has now been renamed "partner" but it isn't in there, i have searched for it with Synaptic. Although as I remember back on 6.10 when it was there it would download but still not install because of kernel headers.

There are tutorials on the web on how to get it working but for me if you can't just add a repo and install it with synaptic or double click a deb it doesn't get used.

 

[PhilGQ]

We currently use Redhat at work to run a couple of 64 bit VMWare servers, each box has around 15 virtual w2k boxes running on it, used for our test rigs. Works quite well, not had any issues with it personally but I dont often do any work on it.
Commiting changes to disks is a real tedious job though, takes forever on each virtual box, and this is running on RAID'ED 15k rpm SCSI drives. Otherwise its quite stable, in the 6 months we have had it I've not known any issues with it.

What is the spec on those physical machines mate, what does it take to run all those VMs

 

[BruceLee]

What is the spec on those physical machines mate, what does it take to run all those VMs

Off the top of my head I think its 512mb each per VM box x 13 or so I think, so around 6-8GB RAM, 14 x 146GB 15K rpm SCSI drives in RAID split between them and 2x Xeon processors. Its an IBM 1U server (plus the drives) but will check the model number later. As I said its only for our test servers but seems to do the job, we do the same with our AIX servers on test, run them under virtualisation on around the same specs.

EDIT: Remembered its an IBM xSeries server

http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cg...ype=ca&appname=Demo&htmlfid=877/ENUSZG04-0486