Installing VMWare Workstation

Virtual Machines are truly the way to go. VM Ware Workstation is my choice over the others even if I had to pay for it. Started using VMs when MS bought out Virtual PC and made it their own sometime around 2003. I can understand Antman the problems you had with VM workstation, I too had the same problems, but stay with it and I got everyting working except in OpenSuse 11.1/.2, just cannot get it to recognize the HD sound card (bummer). But all the other OSs work great.

This post is being type in Firefoxe on Ubuntu 9.1 in VM workstation.

Enjoy the world of Virtual Machines. :)

@Lee - I am virtually enjoying VMs. The problems that I had with VMware were limited to the learning curve.

Antman - I can understand the learning curve. It is actually designed more for the IT Tech world then the at home environment. And, Virtual Box is actually the best for someone who is just out to test drive different OSs, on a home system.

Antman said:

Thank you, Viking raider! But where were you six weeks ago? .....

I may eventually purchase VMware Workstation. Hands down, it was the superior VM package.

Cheers there

I do quite a bit of travelling -- A lot of people are on holiday (Vacation) in July so during the "Credit Crunch" I boosted my overtime a bit so didn't have a lot of time for this (excellent and informative) forum.

Anyway here's one link for creating vmware images with QEMU -- after build run vmware player (free).

Using VMware Player to Create Images for New Virtual Machines

However if you do purchase vmware workstation it is IMO worth while although a little expensive for some I agree.


Cheers
jimbo

Antman,

Welcome to the wonderful world of virtual machines. I will admit, for me, they are the most exciting thing to have happened to the desktop PC in the past 10 years. I think back to the days of studying for certification exams and so forth and how much easier it would have been with the use of something like this.

At work, it's a great tool in our data centre, because in almost every case the use of an actual machine is just overkill for the process on hand. Instead, we buy 1 server and then run 10-15 virtual machines on that server. It's absolutely awesome for installing patches or making a bit change. You can take a snapshot if you are concerned and you can reboot the machine in about 20 seconds. On a real server which has to POST...that is usually a 2-3 minute process.

Next, at work, they are fantastic for learning purposes. I've built entire training classes at work for the others guys about Linux and how software RAID works, or how the LVM (logical volume management) system works. With virtual machines, you can actually add additional drives, expand and shrink volumes and learn firsthand exactly what is involved. It's irreplaceable as a learning tool. And the best part is that you can get it ready, then you can make a quick backup of the virtual hard drive file, then bring up the VM and screw around all you want and if you mess it up...you simply copy over your backup and you are right back in business.

As far as VMWare is concerned, I typically use their free VMWare Server product. It installs and runs fine on Windows Vista or Windows 7. In my opinion, it has a little more bloat then some of the other products out there and I don't LOVE the web only interface ( I prefer a small EXE that I can run to manage my virtual machines). You should certainly give it a try in your evaluations.

At work, we tend to use VMWare ESXi...which is their free "bare metal hypervisor product". So, rather than running a host operating system of Windows or Linux...this installer has it's own tiny OS which installs on the system and provides the foundation for running virtual machines. These are often a far better way to go because they 1). consume less resources because there isn't an entire HOST OS to run on the machine 2). have a much smaller install footprint and thus don't have anywhere near the vulnerabilities or surface area to attack, 3). Must better hardware allocation for the virtual machines themselves. However, the "hypervisor" products due tend to be finicky about the hardware they support...generally speaking they want honest to goodness "server class machines". You can however find ESXi "whitebox" sites which provide information on various pieces of commodity hardware that will work with the product.

ezhik said:

Virtualization, specifically VMware Workstation has changed the way I use my computer. Since the days of Windows 98 I've dual or multi-booted, but now I've given all that up and gone the way of virtualization. I still need XP to run a couple of old quirky progs that I use, Linux because I'm interested in learning about it, and Mac OS X because I can.

I do dual boot, but that is now just two partitions with W7 x64, the second being an instant back-up in case of catastrophic failure, (ie me being a complete dunce and messing up big style).

With XP SP3, Ubuntu64 and Mac OS X Leopard all installed as guest operating systems, I have what I consider a pc more flexible than I could have imagined not long ago. Virtualization is definitely going to be a big part of the future of computing.

How did you get Mac OS X Leopard running on vmware?

vBox 3.06 was released. I installed it. VM CPU usage skyrocketed, sometimes pegging.

3.06 is now unistalled. I don't care why it pegged the CPU.

New builds are coming fairly steadily.

Once you have a working VM, you can just use VMPlayer to run it. Although you can also make VMs by getting a virtual drive and then getting into the bios and installing the OS, also may require tweaking the vmx file some.

EasyVMX!: Virtual Machine Creator

Lee said:

Virtual Machines are truly the way to go. VM Ware Workstation is my choice over the others even if I had to pay for it. Started using VMs when MS bought out Virtual PC and made it their own sometime around 2003. I can understand Antman the problems you had with VM workstation, I too had the same problems, but stay with it and I got everyting working except in OpenSuse 11.1/.2, just cannot get it to recognize the HD sound card (bummer). But all the other OSs work great.

This post is being type in Firefoxe on Ubuntu 9.1 in VM workstation.

Enjoy the world of Virtual Machines. :)

I am interested in VMWare, for home use mainly, but also for the advantage of its position in the enterprise virtualized world.

Just a couple questions. Is that in fact the case? That VMW is the standard out in the "real world"

And how much does an individual pay to use a single license? $$