jaymc Posted September 19, 2008 Share Posted September 19, 2008 I've acquired a big project and an equally big server for this, Dell 6600 32GB ram, 4xCPU My first mission is to get some virtual machines going on it, for this I will use VMWARE My question is, what product from VMWARE can/should I use to do this for free? I have seen VMWARE SERVER, PLAYER and ESX but there are so many other, its confusing! Im pretty sure ESX is its own base operating system, that would be cool as I don't want to run a base OS if I don't have to If I do have to, what OS should I run underneath to host the VMWARE environment? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.josh Posted September 19, 2008 Share Posted September 19, 2008 windows. preferably vista. I hear it's leetsauce. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaymc Posted September 19, 2008 Author Share Posted September 19, 2008 And why do you suggest that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted September 19, 2008 Share Posted September 19, 2008 I think he was joking.... Not sure. I'm kinda curious my self now if he wasn't joking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaymc Posted September 20, 2008 Author Share Posted September 20, 2008 Yeh, I gathered Does anyone have any input on this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted September 20, 2008 Share Posted September 20, 2008 Here is how to figure it out: Go to wmware.com, then you look around and you'll notice the "Products" link where you'll check out one of the ones you mentioned. We'll start with VMWare Server and you click How To Get It. On that page it says: Download VMware Server -Free Begin experiencing the benefits of virtualization today and download VMware Server for free right now. (my emphasis) End of my ultra short "how to browse the internet and find your answers"-guide. I don't mean to sound condescending, but if you cannot figure out how to compare VMWare's products, are you then competent enough to manage a server and its VPS nodes running in VMs? Furthermore, why did you pick specifically VMWare if you have no idea of what their products offer? There are several others such as VirtualBox, Xen, or OpenVZ that can create virtual machines as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaymc Posted September 20, 2008 Author Share Posted September 20, 2008 Great, thanks Any input on the best OS to run as the host? A lot of people say Windows XP is a good choice I'd prefer to use windows as Im more familiar with that but someone that you still have the issue of stability that comes with win32, so linux maybe a better option? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted September 21, 2008 Share Posted September 21, 2008 Run a linux distro without a GUI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted September 21, 2008 Share Posted September 21, 2008 I agree on Linux without a GUI, but I want to know where your thought of Win32 instability came from? Why do people always say Windows is unstable? I will say that Vista is unstable, but XP isn't in my opinion, and neither is Server 03. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted September 21, 2008 Share Posted September 21, 2008 Perhaps not, but bash (and any other *nix shell) is way better than Windows' CLI is. Also, as far as I know it's not possible to run Windows without a GUI so that means you'll have to waste resources on something that's not used so often. On a server (or perhaps any system) you shouldn't have things you don't need and you certainly don't need a GUI for a server. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted September 21, 2008 Share Posted September 21, 2008 I agree entirely with the GUI statements. Tying the GUI into the OS was stupid on Windows, but hey, when Windows (well what Windows is now, as in when 3.1 came out) first came out, the GUI was the selling point. Then I guess they either just got wrapped up in it and got stuck with it (even though some major rewrites have happened obviously), or figure it's not important. I'm fine with people bashing Windows over the GUI thing, especially as expensive as the Windows GUI has gotten to run, but I've never seen this instability about which other people love to bitch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ardyandkari Posted September 21, 2008 Share Posted September 21, 2008 corbin: if i remember correctly, windows 3.1 required dos as a backend...windows 95 was the first version that ran w/o dos. also...i use windows often, but i personally feel that it is fairly flaky when it comes to stability (bsod anyone?). if i was flexible enough to learn linux well, then i would switch over to it as much as possible...as far as i can tell linux would be the way to go for a server... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted September 21, 2008 Share Posted September 21, 2008 if i remember correctly, windows 3.1 required dos as a backend...windows 95 was the first version that ran w/o dos. Windows up to and including Me used a DOS kernel. Alongside 9x was Windows NT and Windows 2000 was alongside Me. XP was the first consumer oriented Windows operating system that utilized the NT kernel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted September 21, 2008 Share Posted September 21, 2008 The way I understand it, the GUI in Windows is tied into the kernel, so it doesn't look like we'll even be seeing a Windows without a GUI, unless of course they did a full rewrite. "if i was flexible enough to learn linux well, then i would switch over to it as much as possible...as far as i can tell linux would be the way to go for a server..." The basics of linux are very easy. Once you get into the more complex stuff, it becomes more difficult, but a simple setup on linux is easy. Guess it would be a bad idea to start running virtual machines on something you're not comfortable with though ;p. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaymc Posted September 21, 2008 Author Share Posted September 21, 2008 Windows XP Only supports 4GB of ram Server 2003 enterprise edition will do 32GB I think I am going to go with centos 4, version 5 will only support 16GB of memory also Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted September 22, 2008 Share Posted September 22, 2008 The maximum amount of RAM has to do with how many bits the processor has (with Windows anyway, I would assume the same applies to other OSs). Windows XP x64 can have I think up to 32GB RAM. The reason the x32 version maxes at 4 is because of how memory is addressed. 32 bits... 2^32 = 4294967296. Also, all of the memory in the system is under that limit, so if the computer has a 512MB graphics card, 3.5GB RAM is the max. Gotta </3 x86. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaymc Posted September 22, 2008 Author Share Posted September 22, 2008 Ok that makes sense as it did actually only register as 3.5GB although the graphics is only 8MB! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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