Virtualization Program

[D_J01]

Which virtualization program is the best? Is VMware better? Pros? Cons?

[dinos22]

no idea about others but try VirtualBox its cool and free

[D_J01]

Dinos, is it straight forward?

[dinos22]

yes VERY user friendly

[D_J01]

Dinos, Thanks for the feedback.

[dinos22]

just testing an OS today actually on it, make sure you install this Guest additions as it makes things a lot easier so once you select it go to CD drive and install the app for your OS (32 or 64bit) and you will have seamless mouse control, much easier to use it.

[ewitte]

We do mostly ESXi and a handful of the paid version. Tried the Microsoft one once and it didn't support the fairly standardized NIC that was in the server. There is also a lot more overhead having to go on top of another OS. Thats the main reason we moved away from VMWare server. Certain things done to the OS would break it from time to time. It wasn't anywhere near as stable or fast as ESX. When you have a supported platform/license things like vmotion and HA help a lot. A few months ago did a VMotion to another server so I could install a 2nd processor. It was literally offline for 2-5 seconds.

[desnudopenguino]

It depends on what you are looking to do... If you are looking for something to occasionally run a vm, or have different OS's running all the time. OpenBox and VMWare are pretty nice tools for the occasional virtualization. ESX or XEN are nice when you plan on having many virtual servers running. ESX can be picky about hardware (namely NIC's... it didn't like the Realtek chip last time I tried). Like I said at the beginning, you will want a tool that suits your needs here. you probably don't need ESX to run an occasional VM (though you could do this) and you probably wouldn't want to run a 24/7 server off of an OpenBox VM (though it could be done as well).