Vmware As Host Os

[G-Stress]

I'm trying to virtualize a few VM's and I would like to make VMWare the host OS, but I'm a bit confused on what version of VMWare I need and how to go about installing it as the host OS. Is it esxi and is it just a bootable .iso install?

[digip]

They've changed a lot of their product line and integrated them with new names. I think vSphere is what you are after if you want to install vmware natively and not as an application on en exisiting OS. Otherwise you cna use vmware Server which is free, but requires to be installe don WIndows or Linux exisiting OS. There is also Workstation, which is what I use at home. If you have a beefy desktop, Workstation does the job, minus the web interface to control them remotely like with Server.

https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/index.php?...e-esxi&lp=1

Edited August 28, 2010 by digip

[VaKo]

ESXi (which is the name of the Hypervisor, vSphere is the enter platform) is a good choice if your hardware is compatible. This is a big-if, as it is designed for things like Dell/IBM/HP servers rather than white boxes. Check out this site. There is also HyperV, which is the Microsoft equivalent and is pretty good, plus has the same level of hardware support as Windows 7/2008 R2, which means it will run on pretty much anything. And finally, there is Xen, but I've never used it before.

[G-Stress]

Thanks digip and VaKo, vSphere seems to be exactly what I need. I have a PowerEdge 2500 and a 2600... seems I need to do a few upgrades or get a better server to run this.

big thanks for the hardware compatibility list. It seems as if most companies are leaning toward virtualization these days so I figured I'd try to run a few VM's natively with VMWare as the host OS.

A side note, what I mainly trying to achieve with this is running server 2k3 in a VM along with a few other's of course, but mainly for a mail server for my own personal e-mail accounts. I recently had a bad experience and one of my e-mail accounts got "deleted" somehow and so now I would like to run a mail server using outlook or if there is anything better in a VM somehow to download my e-mails every say 15 minutes and if the server crashed I could just use some sort of data recovery to copy the VM and then use it again... right?

That being said that opens up a few more ?'s. Say I run this on my PowerEdge 2500 and it has 6 SCSI disks... I'm running in forgive me for my lack of remembering the specifics of all raid variants, but say I'm running the version of raid that see's all disks as 1 Disk and the server crashes. Would it still be possible to back up the VM?

[VaKo]

Ok, from my experience of building and managing around 30 ESXi boxes (ESX is dead tech, stick with ESXi) a 2500/2600 isn't going to work. ESXi 4.x is x64 only, and you will need a 28x0 or higher to use it. Same with Hyper-V, but it also needs hardware VT (which frankly, ESXi needs as well). So with those servers, its ESXi 3.5 or bust. Use CPU-Z to check your CPU's, but I think your out of luck. Also, if you have less than 4GB of RAM, its not going to be worth it.

As for backing up ESXi VM's, you should check out http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9843.

[G-Stress]

Thanks for the insight VaKo, I really want to get into Virtualization. I use VMWare workstation 6.5 frequently, but would like to experience using it as the host OS. Yea I got about 3GB or ram on the 2600, but am in the process of getting a more up to date server.