Softpanorama (slightly skeptical) Open Source Software Educational Society

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)

VMWare

VMware is "heavyweight" virtual machine "built" on the underlying layer of hardware and the existing operating system. It doesn't take control of your keyboard, mouse and video -- you can run it in full screen mode as well as in a window.  They also provided free VMware version for running such "precooked" images and demo -- VMware Player.

This, however, requires some modifications to get everything to act as usual. The virtual machine runs on top of the existing OS and provide emulated "virtual machine devices" that might be radically different from the underling hardware.  The great advantage of this is that you can virtualized hardware. The disadvantage is pretty heavy performance penalty in case of large discrepancies (especially in video drivers). 

And in fact while far from being the first or the most capable virtual machine, VMware was the first successful product that abstracted the hardware layer to the extent possible for creating VMware images for different OSes running on Intel hardware as well as OSes with certain applications preinstalled (virtual appliances). The latter completely redefined the concept of the demo as many applications now became too complex to install and demo disks mostly ends in the dust bin without any real chance to be used even once.

As a side note one of the biggest mistakes on Sun's brass was that they failed to buy VMware and were unable to capitalize on the pact with Microsoft: Microsoft Virtual server does not support Solaris. VMware workstation 6 has support for Solaris 10.

What is interesting is that Vmware was shockingly inept in promoting 'virtual appliances" theme. Contribution to their site are not well checked.  High quality examples from Vmware itself are missing in action.  Relying on P2P network for downloading is a little bit amateurish: corporation that charges serious money for its server products can probably fund a decent server for downloading (checked) appliances.  Much smaller companies can do this.

Notes: Those pages are written by people for whom English is not a native language. Some amount of grammar and spelling errors should be expected. This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site. It cannot replace the best teachers and the best books. The site contain some obsolete pages as it develops like a living tree... Some links on older pages are broken. Please try to use Google, Open directory, etc. to find a replacement link (see HOWTO search the WEB for details). We would appreciate if you can mail us a correct link. Search Amazon by keywords:     Open directory Research Index

Old News ;-)

[PDF] Using VMware Player

[May 31, 2007] Frameworkx, VMware Workstation 6.0 Build 45731 RTM!

VMware Workstation 6.0 Build 45731 RTM!

This release provides experimental support for the following operating systems:

• 32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 (Beta, formerly called 4.0 Update 5) as host and guest operating systems
• 32-bit and 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4 (Beta) as host and guest operating systems
• 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 7.04 as a guest operating system

This release provides full support for the following operating systems:

• 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista as host and guest operating systems
• 32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 as host and guest operating systems
• 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 6.10 as host and guest operating systems
• 32-bit and 64-bit Mandriva Linux 2007 as host and guest operating systems
• 32-bit and 64-bit Solaris 10 Update 3 as guest operating system
• 32-bit Novell Netware 6.5 SP5 as guest operating system

New Features in Version 6

• Support for High-Speed USB 2.0 Devices
• Multiple Monitor Support — At the click of a button, the guest can now span monitors and also reflect the monitor topology — meaning that applications, task bars, and so on inside the guest appear as you would expect them to on a multi-monitor system. You can specify how many monitors a virtual machine can detect, regardless of how many monitors are attached to the host. This feature is especially useful if you plan to deploy the virtual machine to a different host after you create it. You can also specify what screen resolution to use.
• Integrated Virtual Debuggers — With the new Workstation IDE (integrated development environment) plug-ins, software developers are provided with menu items and toolbar buttons in Visual Studio (Windows only) or Eclipse (Windows or Linux) to easily develop and debug programs in virtual machines. Documentation for the virtual debuggers is now included in the Workstation User's Manual.
• Run Virtual Machines in the Background — You can now leave virtual machines and teams running in the background when you exit Workstation. On the host, a system tray icon indicates how many virtual machines are running in the background. Click the icon to open a virtual machine.
• Increased RAM Support — The previous limit of 4GB total RAM that could be used for all virtual machines combined has been removed. The amount of memory used by all virtual machines combined is now limited only by the amount of the host computer’s RAM and page file size. The maximum amount of memory that can be allocated per virtual machine has been raised from 3.6GB to 8GB.
• Virtual Machines Can Act as VNC Servers — You can set a virtual machine to act as a VNC server without having to install any specialized VNC software in the guest.
• Record/Replay of Virtual Machine Activity (Experimental) — This feature lets you record all of a Workstation 6 virtual machine’s activity over a period of time. Unlike Workstation’s movie-capture feature, the record/replay feature lets you exactly duplicate the operations and state of the virtual machine throughout the time of the recording. At any time during playback of a recording, you can click a button to "go live" from that point of execution.
• Easy Upgrade or Downgrade of VMware Virtual Machines — A new Change Version wizard steps you through the process of upgrading or downgrading virtual machines between Workstation versions 4, 5, and 6. The wizard helps you determine which virtual hardware version to use for various VMware products. You have the choice of either changing the version of the original virtual machine or creating a full clone.
• Automation Via Expanded VIX 1.1 API — The VIX API (formerly known as the Programming API) is now compatible with Workstation 6. This API allows you to write scripts and programs to automate virtual machine operations. This release of the API is available in the C language. There are additional language bindings for Perl, COM, and shell scripts (vmrun). li>
• Physical-to-Virtual Conversion and Enhanced Import Functionality (Windows Hosts Only) — Included in this release is the Converter Import wizard from the VMware Converter product. Using this wizard enables you to convert a physical Windows machine into a virtual machine, convert a virtual machine from one VMware virtual machine format to another, and convert virtual machines or system images from popular third-party vendors.
• Automatic Upgrade to the Latest Version of VMware Tools — You can now set VMware Tools to automatically upgrade itself when a Windows or Linux virtual machine is powered on.
• Appliance View for Virtual Appliances — Rather than having users see a console view for an appliance, you can now configure the new appliance view. It gives you a brief description of the type of server or appliance and provides a link that opens the browser on the guest system and connects to the correct port for the server console.
• Enhanced File Sharing and Copy and Paste Functionality — You can now use shared folders on a Solaris guest. You can copy and paste text and files between Linux and Windows hosts and Linux, Windows, and Solaris guests.
• Performance Improvements for Shared Folders with Linux Guests — Depending on usage, exchanging files between a host and Linux guest is now up to 40 percent faster when using shared folders.
• Cross-Platform Drag-and-Drop Functionality — You can now drag and drop files and directories from a Linux or Windows host to a Linux, Solaris, or Windows guest, and vice versa.
• New Online Help System — The help system includes full-text search, bookmarking ability, index, and table of contents.
• Battery Information Is Now Reported in the Guest — If you use a laptop to run a guest in full screen mode, you will now be able to see status information about the host's battery.
• Support for Paravirtualized Linux Kernels — If you have a VMware VMI (Virtual Machine Interface) 3.0 enabled kernel in a Linux guest operating system, you can now enable paravirtual support in the virtual machine.
• User Interface for Mapping a Virtual Disk to a Drive Letter on the Windows Host
• Improved 64-bit Guest Support — Intel EM64T VT-capable processors are now fully supported.
• New 64-bit Sound Driver
• Virtual Machine Communication Interface (Experimental) — VMCI provides a faster means of communication among applications running on the host and in virtual machines. The VMCI infrastructure comprises an SDK and drivers for host and guest. This experimental feature is especially suited for users who want to write client-server applications. For more information, see the README file. On Linux hosts, the README file is located in the directory /usr/share/doc/vmware/vmware-vmci/samples. On Windows hosts, it is in the VMCI folder in VMware Workstation installation directory; for example, C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation\VMCI.
• Enhanced virtual keyboard on Windows hosts — Now when you press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, the Windows guest system only, rather than both guest and host, will act on the command. The new virtual keyboard provides better handling of international keyboards and keyboards with extra keys. This feature also offers security improvements, as it processes raw keyboard input as soon as possible, bypassing Windows keystroke processing and any malware that’s not already at a lower layer. This feature is currently available for all 32-bit Windows guests except Windows Vista guests.
• VMware Player 2.0 — The new Player Welcome page gives you the option of browsing to a virtual machine file or downloading a virtual appliance from the Virtual Appliance Marketplace at vam.vmware.com. You can then use Player’s new appliance view when running a virtual appliance. For more information about standalone VMware Player 2.0, see the VMware Player Documentation page.

Fixed Bugs

The following bugs were reported as known issues in Workstation 5.5.3 and were fixed for the Workstation 6.0 release.

• On Linux guests that have SELinux enabled, accessing shared folders (/mnt/hgfs) fails with kernel oops error messages (bug 131213).
• In guests running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 or Ubuntu Linux 6.10 (or any Linux guests that use Xorg X Windows system versions 7.1 or higher) the Workstation 5.5.x VMware Tools installer does not install drivers for X Windows, and consequently the mouse does not perform correctly (bug 124689). The version of VMware Tools included with Workstation 6.0 does install the correct drivers.
• Workstation 5.5.3 does not support USB for Solaris guests. Workstation 6.0 does support USB for Solaris guests.

Known Issues

• When you install Workstation on a Windows Vista host, be sure to enter the serial number at installation time. This is necessary so that when you enter the serial number, you will have the required permission settings. If you enter the serial number later, as a different user, you might not have the correct permissions.
• If you run the Workstation installer on a Windows Vista host in order to use the Change option, you need to first turn off UAC (user account control). Otherwise, the wizard immediately displays the Finish dialog box and you receive an error message.
• On Windows Vista hosts, if you uninstall Workstation from the Control Panel, you might see a UAC (user account control) prompt that warns you about an unidentified program wanting to access your computer. You can safely click Allow.
• On Windows Vista hosts, if you start Workstation without administrative privileges, power on a virtual machine, exit Workstation with the virtual machine running in the background, and then start Workstation with administrative privileges, you cannot access the virtual machine.
  Workaround: Either always run Workstation with administrative privileges or always without.
• On Windows Vista hosts, you might not be able to view or select physical disk partitions when creating a virtual machine.
• On Windows Vista hosts, you need to run the Virtual Network Editor as an Administrator. You need to be logged in as a member of the Administrators group and either disable UAC (user account control) or start the Virtual Network Editor by right-clicking it in the Start menu and choosing Run as Administrator.
• On Windows Vista guests, to open the VMware Tools control panel, you need to be logged in as an Administrator user.
• If you are using multiple monitors and manually configure the display resolution in the guest to a combined size that is larger than the guest VRAM supports, you might get a blue screen or crash the guest.
  Workaround: Avoid manually setting the guest display resolution from within the guest to very large sizes across multiple monitors.
• For Windows 95 virtual machines created with Workstation 4.5 or ACE 1.0, upgrades of VMware Tools are sometimes incomplete.
  Workaround: First, uninstall VMware Tools. (For example, on Windows guests, go to Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs, and remove the VMware Tools program). Next, use Workstation 6 to install VMware Tools again.
• If you install Workstation on a Windows 2003 Server host, Workstation help does not display correctly until you enable JavaScript. This is because, on Windows 2003 Server, JavaScript is disabled by default in Internet Explorer.
  Workaround: In Internet Explorer, choose Tools > Options > Internet > Custom Level > Scripting > Active Scripting, and choose Enable.
• Avoid attempting to exit Workstation and run a virtual machine in the background while recording activity on that virtual machine, using the record/replay feature. Doing so might cause the virtual machine to crash. Always stop recording before sending a virtual machine to run in the background.
• On Linux hosts, the Favorites list might get erased if you exit Workstation and manually choose to run some virtual machines in the background.
  Workarounds: If you want to run virtual machines in the background, from the Workstation menu bar, choose Preferences > Workspace > Virtual Machines, and select the "Run powered on virtual machines in background after close" option. Alternatively, always close virtual machines individually and run them in the backgroun before exiting Workstation.
• Do not attempt to play recordings of virtual machine activity that you made with an earlier, pre-release version of Workstation. On Linux hosts, doing so might cause Workstation to exit unexpectedly.
• When the virtual floppy drive is connected to the physical floppy drive on the host, the guest might not recognize floppy disk changes.
  Workaround: Connect the virtual floppy drive to the physical floppy drive while a floppy disk is in the physical drive.
• Workstation fails to install on 64-bit Linux hosts unless 32-bit compatibility libraries are installed in host. Some 64-bit Linux host operating systems don't install 32-bit compatibility libraries by default. Workstation runs on 64-bit systems, but needs the 32-bit compatibility libraries installed. When you try to install Workstation on a 64-bit Linux host without the 32-bit compatibility libraries, an error message similar to the following may appear:
  /usr/bin/ldd: line 171: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: No such file or directory
  Workaround: Install a 32-bit compatibility package for your Linux distribution. The name of the 32-bit compatibility package varies across distributions. For example, for Ubuntu you should install the ia32-libs and ia32-libs-gtk packages. See your distribution's documentation or Web site to determine the 32-bit compatibility package for your distribution.
• On Mandrake 10.0 guests, dragging and dropping files from guest to host does not work.
• If you share a folder between a Linux host and a Windows guest, symbolic links will not be accessible by the Windows guest. Symbolic links appear as regular files on Windows guests, but the links are not followed when you attempt to open them.
• On Windows hosts, if you want to create and run applications with the VMCI SDK, you need to rename vmci.dll to crosstalk.dll. You can find the vmci.dll file in the VMCI installation directory (for example, C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation\VMCI.
• On Windows Vista hosts, if you want to use File > Import to create a virtual machine from a physical machine, you need to start Workstation by right-clicking the desktop icon and choosing "Run as administrator."
• Occasionally, when you use File > Import to convert a Symantec backup or Norton Ghost image (.sv2i files) with volume resizing, the operation hangs.
  Workarounds: First, try again. If the problem persists, try again without volume resizing.
• If you use File > Import to convert a virtual machine, some of the configuration properties from the source might be lost. For example, a generic SCSI device or shared folder might be removed.
• On hosts that use a Windows 2000 Professional SP4 operating system, occasionally, you won't be able to use File > Import to create a virtual machine from a physical machine. The following error message appears: Unable to determine guest operating system. This error occurs when the msdos.sys file is either not present or not accessible.
• The File > Open and File > Import commands have several limitations for StorageCraft ShadowStore images (.spi files) and Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery images (.sv2i files). The limitations are:
• 1. No support for dynamic disks.
  2. Images relating to the backup of the same machine should be in the same folder, with no other images placed there.
  3. All the volumes in the disk up to the active and system volumes must be backed up. (For example, say there are 4 partitions (1-4) on a disk, and partition 2 is the active volume and partition 3 is the system volume. Volumes 1-3 must be backed up.)
  4. If it is an incremental image, up to 16 incremental backups are supported.
  In addition, for StorageCraft images, there is no support for systems with logical drives if the logical drive is also a system/active volume.
• Visual Studio 2005 allows multiple projects to be debugged simultaneously when Start is chosen. However, the Visual Studio Integrated Virtual Debugger currently supports only one project and one configuration for debugging at any given time. If you select multiple projects as debugging targets, the Visual Studio Integrated Virtual Debugger only chooses the first one on the list.

VMware will now support what it calls para-virtualised Linux, and the Solaris x86 operating system in future releases of all its core products.

The news follows its earlier announcement to open its code with the aim of promoting open virtualisation standards. Techworld examines the issues behind that move here.

Para-virtualised Linux is an OS that's been specifically modified to run in a virtual environment. The technique involves modifying the guest OS slightly to run on an architecture similar to the host machine while omitting the parts that are hard to virtualise. It's particularly important on x86 platforms because that architecture has many features that are complex and inefficient to virtualise. The benefit is said to be decreases in the performance overhead of virtualisation - down from some 20 per cent to two per cent, according to some sources.

VMware said it would add support for such Linuxes "as they become adopted in commercial operating system distributions". This gives customers the choice of running both unmodified and para-virtualised operating systems, with or without assistance from underlying processor technologies, concurrently on the same virtualisation platform.

VMware is also adding support for Solaris x86 across its virtual infrastructure products. It said the advantage is that enterprises with mixed environments can deploy and manage any combination of Linux, NetWare, Solaris x86 and Windows and instances across the same VMware virtualisation platform.

According to VMware, its support for these additional operating systems means IT admins can use its management software VirtualCenter with VMotion technology - which allows live servers to be moved from one virtual machine host to another.

Comment
"VMware's support for para-virtualised Linux and Solaris x86 operating systems and our experience with enabling virtual operating environments for more than 10,000 enterprise server customers is consistent with our continued commitment to give customers greater choice," said VMware marketing VP Jeffrey Engelmann. "With more options available, customers can transition a larger portion of their data centre workloads to a virtual infrastructure and thereby benefit from the proven ROI of a virtual operating environment."

"Using VMware virtual infrastructure on a large scale since 2002 has brought us multiple benefits," said Tony Adams, technology analyst for J.R. Simplot. "VMware's support of a wide variety of operating systems gives us the flexibility to run key applications on multiple operating systems in test, development, staging and production, and manage them with one set of tools. We plan to leverage their support of para-virtualised operating systems to continue to strengthen our infrastructure."

IBM locks in VMware through 2007 The Register

>By Ashlee Vance in Chicago Published Wednesday 19th May 2004  Shocking as it may seem, IBM and EMC have agreed on a three-year technology sharing pact. Well, not exactly.

IBM has reupped its partnership with virtualization software maker VMware through 2007. The deal between the two companies has and will continue to have VMware's software be the main partitioning option for IBM's x86 (Intel and AMD) server customers. Extending this relationship through 2007 proves IBM was not put off by EMC's $635m acquisition of VMware late last year.

"Being able to virtualize computing and manage systems remotely is a critical aspect of on demand computing," said Leo Suarez, vice president of IBM's xSeries servers. "Our partnership with VMware complements the IBM on demand strategy by bringing partitioning to the xSeries and Intel-based BladeCenter product lines. Combined with IBM Virtualization Engine, VMware extends IBM's virtualization capability across the entire xSeries and Intel-based BladeCenter servers."

IBM has long been VMware's biggest cheerleader. Big Blue has been reselling and sharing engineering efforts around VMware's ESX Server product for years. The latest agreement also sees IBM getting behind VMware's VMotion, VirtualCenter and Virtual SMP products - all of which help administrators manage applications on partitioned servers.

There had been some speculation that IBM might cool on the VMware relationship after bitter storage rival EMC bought the firm. VMware's products do play a fairly central role in IBM's future server plans by letting administrators run Linux and Windows together on the same system and by letting them consolidate applications. On its higher end Unix and mainframe systems, IBM uses in-house technology for these types of tasks.

VMware, however, appears to have convinced IBM of its independence. To its credit, EMC saw the need to keep VMware neutral moving forward, as it has attracted attention from HP, Dell and a host of other server/software makers on top of IBM.

VMware currently claims 5,500 customers and 2.5 million users of its products.

Q&A Ed Bugnion, VMware co-founder, on the EMC acquisition - Computerworld

Q&A: Ed Bugnion, VMware co-founder, on the EMC acquisition
VMware will remain independent, he says
APRIL 30, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - VMware's ability to run multiple operating systems on a single physical server was a technology sought after by the top echelon of IT vendors, including IBM, which was rumored to be a contender for buying the company. But VMware went to EMC Corp. (see story), which closed on its acquisition of the company in January. This week, VMware Inc. co-founder and chief architect Ed Bugnion talked with Computerworld about that acquisition and where the integration with EMC technology is today.

Why did you pick EMC to acquire you? The surprise was that IBM didn't buy you. We were on track with deliberate plans to put forth an IPO, at which point we got interest from multiple offers. The criteria we were looking for was a partner that ... would allow us to increase our growth by effectively eliminating what was the biggest sales detractor, which was some uncertainty about VMware's future as an independent company and who we'd be acquired by. We obviously found EMC to be ideal along that criteria, because it is a key brand within the most mission-critical parts of the data center. It's something customers relate to. And it's something that really eliminates every doubt about the viability of VMware as a unit of a company the size of EMC, with a $30 billion market cap.

The second criteria we thought was important for the technology to be successful was for it to remain independent of server platform. From a value perspective, an acquisition player that remains neutral with respect to server distribution was attractive. Otherwise we would have effectively been limiting ourselves to the market share of that vendor.

What was the value proposition of VMware, and how has that changed? Historically, and I mean two years ago, it was primarily centered around server consolidation. Server consolidation is about taking a reasonably large server and splitting it up so you can run lots of smaller servers inside that machine. That was the first and second generation [of our product]. What we have right now is a product set designed to run on a clustered environment ... in a farm of physical servers and manage that server farm from a single location and as a single pool of physical resources. That is basically to say [VMware products] manage compute bandwidth, memory bandwidth and I/O bandwidth.

It's very similar in value proposition to the kind of value that EMC provides with the ability to migrate certain storage across arrays.

Where's does integration with EMC's products stand right now? VMware remains an independent, wholly owned subsidiary. So VMware is an EMC company as opposed to an EMC division, which means we maintain all our corporate functions, maintain our legal function, maintain our sales force and -- associated with the sales force -- we've maintained all our own distribution network, all sets of resellers and strategic partnerships, including Windows server vendors.

Do you ever see that changing, where you're more tightly integrated with EMC? At this time there are no plans to change the model. I think there's huge value in maintaining independence. I think that maintaining independence doesn't mean it's void of synergy for EMC customers. I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. There is, for example, a lot of value in interoperability and joint solutions that show how independent products work together to solve a problem and [how] a solution worked out from an end-to-end basis, but to keep the products independent of each other. VMware will remain independent.

How long will it take to integrate your software with EMC's so that business applications and associated storage can be moved together without disrupting operations? I think we're too early into the integration process to be able to talk about the type of solution that requires new releases on either our part or EMC's part. Right now we're working on really just a level of documentation and writing up how joint solutions look and work together.  

VMware Workstation 4.5 focuses on enterprise

Companies can test applications on several platforms, including Linux, Windows and NetWare on the same physical server. Enhancements to 4.5 include:

 

• Support for pre-boot execution environments (PXE);
• Support and performance boosts for guest OSes using the 2.6 Linux kernel;
• Increased memory limits up to 3.6 GB per virtual machine;
• Automatic update checks;
• Integration with Windows Performance Monitor.

Directions on Microsoft lead analyst Michael Cherry said interest in workstation and desktop virtualization software is rising now, as companies test software for server consolidation projects. Directions on Microsoft, based in Kirkland, Wa., provides independent analysis of Microsoft products and happenings.

"Another proof point that this is a big market right now is that the two big [virtualization] players were recently acquired; VMware by EMC and Connectix by Microsoft," Cherry said. "I think that shows enough interest in the space that they want to play there."

VMware product manager Pete Giordano said enterprise demand for VMware Workstation arose from its GSX and ESX server customers.

"Enterprises want to manage the software lifecycle by developing and testing applications on virtual machines before rolling them out departmentally or to the data center," Giordano said.

VMware Workstation 4.5 supports many different Linux guest OSes including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 and 3.0, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 and 8, Red Hat Linux, Red Hat Linux Advanced Server, SuSE Linux, Turbolinux and Mandrake Linux.

"For organizations that want to evaluate Linux, this gives them a way to do that without large investments in new hardware," Cherry said.

Workstation 4.5 is VMware's second release since the EMC acquisition was finalized in January. Last month it released GSX Server 3, and update to its mid-tier virtualization server. That release also targets application-testing groups inside the enterprise.

"There are three places VMware stands out," Cherry said. "The product works very well and it's very stable. They also support both the workstation and the server where Microsoft has yet to release its server implementation yet. Finally they support a large number of guest OSes."

Analyst Reaction to EMC's VMware Bid Mixed

Analyst Reaction to EMC's VMware Bid Mixed>
December 30, 2003
By Clint Boulton

When EMC (Quote, Chart) announced its intent to purchase VMware two weeks ago, many technology analysts greeted the news with praise while their Wall Street counterparts balked, citing a lack of synergy between server virtualization and EMC's core competency, storage.

Count Susquehanna Financial Group among the doubters of EMC's $635 million bid, which it says is expensive considering VMware's 2003 sales.

While encouraged by EMC's earlier purchases of Legato Systems and Documentum to bolster the company's information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy, Susquehanna views EMC's interest in VMware as largely impractical.

"VMware provides little synergy with storage, whereas Legato and Documentum are building on EMC's Information Lifecycle Management strategy," a Susquehanna report said. "VMware, which makes server provisioning software for Windows and Linux environments, is in a different space altogether."

Susquehanna analysts Kaushik Roy and Phillip Rowe also voiced concern that VMware's revenues are from a low price-point software product with limited growth potential.

VMware offers a number of products, but most revenue comes from software licenses of VMotion, ESX server, and GSX server. VMotion helps customers consolidate servers by migrating applications from smaller servers to new, higher-end servers with no downtime for the applications.

"Although this is a valuable tool, we believe these migrations are relatively infrequent (perhaps several times a year)," Roy and Rowe said in their report.

The ESX and GSX server products allow users to partition their Intel servers for the usage of multiple operating systems and applications simultaneously.

"With already about 2 million users and less than $50 million in revenue last year, we can conclude that these products have a low price point," Roy and Rowe said.

But Mark Stahlman, who covers EMC for American Technology Research, feels VMware could prove very valuable for EMC.

He sees what other analysts from companies such as Sageza Research or Gartner see: a company undergoing a metamorphosis as a leading purveyor of storage hardware to a software provider of so-called on-demand, or utility, computing.

Stahlman dismisses the term utility computing as unclear marketing hype, preferring the phrase "virtual computing" to describe a software-driven strategy that configures and reconfigures computing and storage systems with no downtime.

Stahlman told internetnews.com EMC's recent purchases are evidence that the company is trying to improve its position in storage at the same time it is building a broader strategy in virtual computing.

The increased interest in virtualization as a viable computing platform technology is paving the way for an expansion into servers and networks, Stahlman said. IBM (Quote, Chart), and HP (Quote, Chart) already have placement in this arena.

"EMC's benefit from the deal is likely to be an opportunity to integrate its own R&D with the products of VMware as well as gain access to the new company's considerable x86 expertise — crucial now that the Intel architecture is the largest volume for EMC and now that the 64-bit versions of x86 are getting ready to expand rapidly," Stahlman said.

While he wouldn't make any predictions outright, Stahlman said EMC repeatedly referenced network virtualization in a conference call, which he said could be an area EMC is targeting while it digests VMware.

Among the players in the networking virtualization is Inkra Networks. The Fremont, Calif.-based company integrates multiple services, such as firewall, VPN, intrusion detection, SSL, and load balancing in hardware platforms.

Meanwhile, Gartner analysts believe an application monitoring and management or server provisioning company is on tap for EMC. And Sageza Research Director Charles King recently told internetnews.com he expects EMC to acquire database and directory components.

While no one seems to agree on what EMC may buy next, EMC CEO and President Joe Tucci has said his company wasn't actively looking to acquire after VMware. Of course, he said the same thing after announcing the Documentum bid in October.

LinuxTicker: Emulating a complete PC with VMware(Jan 24, 2000)

"VMware is not just an emulator. It is complete virtual machine "built" on the underlying layer of hardware and the existing operating system. It doesn't take control of your keyboard, mouse and video -- you can run it in full screen mode as well as in a window. This, however, requires some modifications to get everything to act as usual. The virtual machine runs on top of the existing OS, using its devices to access the underlying hardware. The great advantage of this is that you can, for example, have up to four virtual network adapters on your virtual machine, and have them all bound to the network which uses the hosting OS as gateway."

Q: What is your target market for the product?

A: There are many market targets that we find suitable for VMware: people who need Windows Productivity Applications on Linux (Office, Mail, Browsers) because they can run Windows programs without the need to reboot the computer; developers who write and test software as well as people who provide tech support, because they can have multiple platforms to work on and test various configurations at the same time; people who develop web content and web sites, because they can use different browsers on different platforms to preview the content they're working on.

Q: Do you believe your product will change the way people think about operating systems?

A: Yes, we would like to think that VMware will change the way people think about their PC and operating system. Today, there is a 1 to 1 mapping between your hardware, the OS you run and the applications you can run: For example, on a PC running a Windows Operating System, you can run only Windows NT and/or Windows 9x compatible applications, on a Linux PC you can run only Linux compatible applications, etc. And there's no way to concurrently run applications for Windows NT and Linux on the same PC, natively.

As a result, you are limited in what you can do:

• Software testing, installs, and upgrades are onerous
• Operating system or application crash have a high impact and bring down the PC
• There is a limit in the applications you can run

These are basically arbitrary rules preventing innovation.

With VMware, you can now do much more:

• Install software or test upgrades in a safe environment without impact on your working world.
• A crash within a Virtual Machine is limited to that environment and will not affect the rest of the PC.
• Run the applications you need, regardless of the OS requirement

Q: Do you plan to port VMware on other platforms?

A: Not at this point. VMware technology is tightly linked to the Intel x86 Architecture.

Q: After unveiling some secrets about Transmeta CPU, do you think that VMware and Transmeta share some points of view? If you were making decision to choose best things from virtual machines philosophy and new CPU "idea", what are the things you would take from both worlds?

A: It is a little too early for us to speak on that subject. Transmeta has not completely unveiled their technology at this point. We are anxious to see the Crusoe launch on January 19.

Q: How would you compare Bochs and Wine projects with VMware?

A: Wine allows some unmodified Windows 3.1, Windows 9x and Windows NT binaries to run on Intel PCs under Linux and other x86 UNIX-like operating systems. Wine is an implementation of the Windows 3.x and Win32 APIs on top of X and Unix. One advantage of Wine is that it does not require a separate Microsoft operating system to run applications. Wine also provides relatively good performance as application code runs natively on the underlying hardware. Individual Windows applications may or may not be supported by Wine. Wine is an alternative implementation of the Win32 API while VMware is a virtual machine monitor. VMware allows multiple operating systems to run by multiplexing them onto the underlying hardware. VMware requires a Microsoft operating system to run Windows applications and provides very high levels of application compatibility. VMware also provides advanced capabilities such as isolation and encapsulation that Wine does not provide.

Bochs is an emulator: Bochs runs entirely at user level and emulates all of the different devices and CPU instructions. As I stated before, VMware is a Virtual Machine monitor (not an emulator or simulator) and as such will take advantage of the underlying hardware to execute instructions and have much better performance. Also, Bochs is not feature complete at this point. Last I checked, networking and some other features where not complete.

Q: How secure is VMware? I.e. is it possible to break in from the cracked virtual box into the real operating system? (from the Internet and from the local machine, if we imagine that user can't run anything other than virtual machine)

A: The Virtual Machine is like another computer on the same network. If you have the Virtual Machine "VM1" running on top of the host "H1", it is like having two machines, VM1 and H1 on the same LAN. As such, any security violation that can be done between two machines on the same LAN can be done between VM1 and H1 (through networking protocols). From VMware's perspective, the memory and disk are completed isolated. One cannot get to read, and/or corrupt data on H1 through the VM1. If you decide to not have networking on VM1 (disable the Ethernet interface through the settings panel), it will be 100% isolated from the rest of the world (no network access to it). There is a variety of other networking settings that you could apply to VM1 and H1: attach H1 to VM1 through a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and VM1 to the world on the Internet, set one up as a firewall and use IP masquerading for the other one, etc. You can therefore do much more with a PC when using VMware :-)

Q: Could it be possible that some exciting new Microsoft technology (like DirectX 15.0 ;-) ) suddenly prevent VMware from running applications that use it? How long would it take to release new version, the one that support that new feature?

A: If there is a new technology not supported by VMware, applications using it would either not run or run in a "less complete" mode. Depending on the technology, the effort to support it will vary in difficulty. Our goal is to be feature complete and we are working in that direction. We are of course very involved with the evolution of technology and do our best to stay on top of it :-)

Q: If there's one thing you would like to improve in VMware, what would it be?

A: We are always working on improving our software. As the product matures, we are trying to better understand how to serve our customers better. We have a pretty steady stream of communication with our users through Email, and newsgroup postings. Each of our releases have addressed bug fixes and product enhancements as demanded by our users. In the long run, we would like to be as feature complete as possible and support a large variety of host and guest operating systems.

Q: What are your future plans?

A: We would like to build a solid company and expand our product line and technology to help change the way people use their PCs. VMware wants to help people go beyond the current constraints of the traditional computing model. VMware delivers flexible computing to dramatically increase productivity and innovation. Our current product is aimed at the desktop market. We will look in ways our technology could be used in other fields.
 

Linux Forum

I'm not saying that Linux can't do everything I want. It just doesn't do it the way I'm used to. Since I come from the world of Windows desktops, there are some things I've gotten used to and don't want to leave just yet. It's not that Windows does them better, faster or more reliably; it just does them in a familiar way. As the Linux Desktop environment continues to evolve many of these programs will be either ported or similar programs will have duplicate feature sets. Until that blissful day, there is VMware.

VMware is a virtual machine emulator. It doesn't emulate any particular Operating System. It emulates the machine, and it is up to you to install the OS. In my case I need Windows 98 to run several programs that I don't have an equal for under Linux. Below I'll give you my install experiences and tell you what I've found to be good and bad about the product. One thing you should to keep in mind, I generally don't read the documentation first. There is no challenge in software with documentation. Beside installation and operation should be intuitive.

	The machine I used for this install is:
	Celeron 300A
	128MB SDRAM
	Creative Labs AGP Banshee Video
	Adaptech 2940UW SCSI Controller
	(2) 4GB SCSI Drives
	Panasonic 16X CD ROM
	ESS chip sound card
	Realtek Ethernet card

As you can see from the list of components, this is a slap together machine. I'm running stock Mandrake 6.0 with updates from one of their mirrors. This machine is configured as a desktop with no server type services other than Samba. I have recompiled the kernel like any good user should to optimize it for my machine components.

I downloaded the demo from http://www.vmware.com/ and registered for the free 30-day trial. Installation was quite easy. In fact I really can't remember anything siginificant about the installation process. When I first ran the program and ran through the configuration I realized that I needed about a gigabyte of free space to create the virtual drive. You can set this to any size you want and tailor it to the OS you are going to install. This gave me reason to add the 2nd 4GB drive. After the configuration file and virtual drive was created. I proceeded with the install of Windows 98. The virtual machine comes rather complete. Below is a snapshot of the initial boot process. You can even go into the virtual BIOS. The install of Windows 98 ran flawlessly. The only thing to note is the install took about twice as long as it would have on a stand-alone machine. I feel this is due to the CD ROM access, more about this later.

 

VMware boot's like a real machine complete with memory checks and BIOS.

Once the Windows 98 install was complete the virtual machine rebooted, into Windows 98 with no sound and a 16 color screen. Each time the virtual machine reboots, Linux stays up and the window reboots. This makes the Windows desire to reboot after every little change more bearable. At this point I downloaded the VMware Tools and installed that into Windows 98. After a reboot I had the same color depth as my X window (32 bit) environment and no sound. Two and a half hours of trying to figure out what was wrong with the sound (remember not using any documentation), I finally found how to enable sound support in the configuration wizard and got Windows 98 to detect the virtual sound card. I had sound after a Windows reboot.

From that point on it has worked like a charm. My Linux machine hasn't rebooted in the past eight days even though Windows 98 reboots at least three times a day. Every desktop style application I've installed has worked flawlessly with no noticeable delays in operation. I have even installed a few games. Games usually require a bit of adjustments in presetting the screen size and color depth. To do this you will have to set your screen depth on your X Window environment since the virtual machine runs at the same screen depth of your X Window environment.

Below is my list of neat stuff, things to watch out for and what needs to be fixed either by VMware in upcoming versions or through a workaround.

Neat Stuff

You don't have to mount floppies or CDs. VMware takes care of the mount process. It appears that VMware doesn't really mount the CD or floppy in a traditional way. It just accesses the device as needed. This could be one reason for some of the apparent slowness during installs.

While the applications are running and not accessing an external device, there is no apparent slowness. I've put a heavy processing load on my Linux machine and popped over to VMware. The switch to the virtual machine is slow but once I'm in the virtual machine everything appears to run at normal speed.

You can make multiple virtual machines. You can even duplicate a current configuration and virtual drive and run the duplicate as if it was a new machine. If you are really paranoid you could setup a script to automatically copy your working virtual desktop every night so if Windows blows up on you, you have a complete backup.

Using Samba you can mount Linux directories as virtual drives. This way you can keep your virtual drive fairly small and share your data files between Linux and your virtual machine. If you are curious how to setup Samba for this you can check out Simon Says Simple Samba Server for setting up a simple Samba server.

Watch Out

Windows has a really neat feature of polling the CD at regular intervals for auto notification and running all of those autorun files on the CDs. Turn it off. This is the first source of slow downs you will find on your virtual machine. To turn it off open your Windows Control Panel, open System, go to Devices and open the properties on your CD Rom drive. Uncheck Auto notification.

You should have at least 128MB of RAM on your system if you plan to run Windows in your virtual machine. Linux runs quite well in 64MB and Windows needs at least 64MB for any sort of reasonable speed.

Make sure you install the VMware Tools. This greatly speeds up your screen displays. VMware also offers an optimized version of XFree86 3.3.3.1. I haven't installed this because I'm using a 3dfx video card and I'm currently using a specially patched XFree86 3.3.3.3.

When you install the network ability you have several options. The one I chose is bridged. Inside Windows 98 I had to assign a unique IP address to my virtual machine. In many ways I feel that this is the best approach, at least for my networking environment. This makes the virtual machine very independent. It looks and acts like another machine on the network.

Bleah - Things that need to be fixed

There is no ability to change the color depth of the virtual machine's screen without changing the depth of the X Window environment. Many games and education software run at 256 colors. My Linux desktop doesn't look that great in 256 colors.

VMware needs to use lots of space in /tmp. For most people this won't be a problem, but for me I only have 40MB free in that partition. When it fills up, the only way to fix it is to crash your virtual machine.

 This was bothering me so much I went to the VMware web site and read the documentation. There is a workaround where you can set the temp directory to another directory by adding a line to your .cfg file for your virtual machine. This fixed the problem for me, but I really would have liked for this to be an option in the configuration wizard. To date I haven't seen it take too much more than 50MB for temp space.

All in all this is a great program. It allows me to run programs like Quicken, Eudora, Turbo Tax, Bryce 3 and Starcraft on my Linux machine without dual booting. I've always disliked the way MetaCreations programs took over the whole screen. Now, I can have it take over a whole virtual machine and keep that machine in a window.

If I had to rate vmware I'd give it 4 1/2 bears out of 5. But we don't do ratings like that here... yet.

• Linux Today - CNET News.com VMware ready to capitalize on hot server market
• PRNewswire: VMware Announces VMware Express for Linux (May 09, 2000)
• ZDNet: VMware Welcomes Guest OSes (May 02, 2000)
• LinuxPlanet: VMware 2.0: Virtually Magnificent (Apr 10, 2000)
• PRNewswire: VMware Signs OEM Agreement With Microsoft (Mar 29, 2000)
• osOpinion: Somebody give VMWare some venture capital. Quickly! (Mar 22, 2000)
• PRNewswire: Google Deploys VMware Software (Mar 13, 2000)

  "Google also uses VMware to access both the Linux and Windows applications they need. According to Google co-founder and president, Sergey Brin, "Working at a hot Internet start-up today, access to both Linux and Windows is a must, since there are hundreds of great applications and tools for both. VMware lets me use both Windows and Linux on one computer at the same time.""
  

• O'Reilly Network: Interview : Mendel Rosenblum of VMware (Feb 27, 2000)
• PC Week: VMware updates software for running multiple OSes (Feb 17, 2000)
• The Standard: Why Choose [when VMWare Lets You Switch]? (Feb 08, 2000)

[Nov. 20, 1999] Build a useful five-headed penguin

VMware's system emulator lets you run up to five OSs on one box simultaneously

Rawn Shah checks out VMware's latest system emulator, version 1.1. It promises to let you run a Linux host OS, then switch -- without rebooting -- among up to four other guest OSs that operate inside virtual hardware created by VMware. (2,100 words)

[July 25, 1999] Welcome to VMware Inc. - Virtual Platform Technology 

VMware software initially comes in two flavors, depending on the user's host operating system: VMware for Linux, and VMware for Windows NT. VMware for Linux (time-limited demo) -- run DOS-, FreeBSD-, Windows 3.x, 9x and NT 4.0-applications easily under Linux. VMware is included in SuSE distribution: http://linuxpr.com/releases/176.html

Experience of on of the users who has Celeron 450 MHz, 256MB RAM and had given virtual machine 64M was quite positive. He used NT driver SVGA from vmware, and after than it started to work with the screen noticeably faster and supported modes more than 800x600. (vmware recommend X 3.3.3.2). in this configuration Visio is working satisfactory (redrawing of screen is a little bit slow in non-full screen mode), but generally is OK. The fact that it's now possible to work on a single computer

Recommended Links

VMware Official Website

Workstation 6.0 Release Notes (HTML)
VMware ACE 2.0 Release Notes (HTML)

Workstation and Workstation ACE Edition Online Library (HTML)
     Workstation User's Manual (PDF)
     VMware ACE Administrator's Manual (PDF)

Related Documents
     Guest Operating System Installation Guide (HTML | PDF)
     Virtual Machine Mobility Planning Guide (PDF)
     Processor Check for 64-Bit Compatibility Guide (PDF)
     Disk Mount User Manual (PDF)
     Virtual Machine Converter User Manual (PDF)
     Technical Note: Dual-Boot Computers and Virtual Machines (PDF)

VMware's back

• VMware Command Line Tools [UPDATED: Feb. 10, 2004]
  Small console programs to use some useful functions of the official VMware-Tools, such as copy & paste and clock synchronization, from a command line environment such as DOS and Windows' DOS box.
  Also contributed ports for Linux and Solaris guests.
• VMware Backdoor I/O Port
  Information about the VMware virtual machine's "backdoor" I/O port, which the VMware Command Line Tools (and the official VMware-Tools, too) use to communicate with the host.
• Solaris 8 Tips & Tricks [UPDATED: Feb. 10, 2004]
  Some (hopefully) useful tips & tricks about building a comfortable Solaris 8 environment in VMware.
• VMware SVGA driver for Solaris [UPDATED: Feb. 19, 2004]
  XFree 86 4.2.0/4.3.0.1 VMware SVGA driver for Solaris 8/9 guest.
• Virtual Floppy Driver
  Virtual floppy disk driver for Windows hosts to access floppy image files.
• Virtual Disk Driver
  Virtual disk driver for Windows hosts to access virtual disk files.

Solaris on VMware

• Getting Started with OpenSolaris Using VMware
• JE Solaris on VMware
• Sys Admin v13, i10 Solaris 10 x86 on VMware
• VMware Community WebForum
  VMware's Back by Kenji Kato
  Rob Bastiaansen VMware page
  Virtual Machine Technology Online Training

Last modified: March 15, 2008