VMWare
From Kathmann Labs
[edit] VMWare
- VMWare is a company that specialized on virtualization. They have a couple different variations on their product line, ranging from free to enterprise level products. All support items like templates, clones, dynamic hardware provisioning, etc.
- I've used VMWare support only about 5 or 6 times, but they have been very responsive every time. The one time I was unhappy with them was after finding a bug in the Virtual Center software and reporting it, they would rather have me send in tons of reports, logs, try this, try that, etc rather than reproducing the error on their own systems. The bug didn't cause any major interruption, rather a simple inconvenience.
VMWare ESX Server
- VMWare's highest level enterprise product
- Loads the kernel and similar memory space into memory once, allowing for memory over-subscription while still keeping it all in RAM
- Supports VLANs and some advanced networking functions
- Uses a modified VMKernel that loads under the linux OS kernel
- Supports VMotion, allowing you to move live VMs between hardware without taking them down
- [[VMWare ESX Server 3.x|ESX 3.x supports HA and DRS options allowing for dynamic resource allocation
WMWare GSX Server
- Business class product line
- Runs on top of installed OS (linux or Windows)
- Virtually the same as VMWare Server but has support
VMWare Player
- The desktop version of their virtualization platform
- Also provided for free
P2V and VMWare Converter
- Allow for easy migration from a physical machine to a VM
- Reconfigures the hardware in the registry from physical or image files to the VMWare supported hardware
