On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 09:55, Roy <linuxcanuck@gmail.com> wrote:
> The competition is VirtualBox from Oracle and I made the switch way back
> when it was still owned by Innotek. I used to use VMWare extensively and
> wondered how it stacks up now. I know that it is much harder to install or
> used to be, as it required some compiling and agreeing to licenses in a
> terminal window. That would put off all but hardcore users when VirtualBox
> is so much simpler for newbies. Then there is the creation of VMs which
> requires a license for one of their products which can either involve steep
> costs or a trial version that expires.
>
> Do you make your own VMs or get ones that others have made?
For what it's worth, I've run VMWare, ESX, VirtualBox, KVM and Xen on
various systems over the years...
For the class I teach, I'm lucky to have removable hard disk trays in
all the lab systems so the students can do bare-metal installs over
and over again. However, for working at home, I give them a CD with
VMWare on it (Not player, I give the free vmware server) and
instructions on how to create VMs and install into those...
For what I do now (a lot of ISO/installation testing), I prefer VirtualBox.
KVM is pretty neat, but does still require a bit of configuration to
get it to do certain things.
Xen is almost identical to KVM in that respect, but KVM is lighter and
seems to me to be more stable (but that could be that I'm jaded after
years of Xen testing).
ESX is a great platform, IMHO, but the biggest problem I have with it
is VMWare requiring a windows workstation to control it via VSphere.
Server will work on any Windows (or linux desktop) and works well.
Player I've never had a use for. I've never been able to find
pre-made images that actually booted on any of my attempts at using
player, so I just gave up on it and went with something more robust.
VirtualBox has it's pros and cons too... easy to use right out the
box, but configuring certain things can be a bit of a pain if you've
never done them before (allowing the VMs to communicate with the host
system via network, for example... But for my needs, beyond that one
thing, VirtualBox does everything I need right out of the box.
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