VMware Server 2.0 beta - First Look
Posted on February 4, 2008
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I’ve been re-reading Hacking Exposed Web Applications, 2nd Ed.
I decided that it would be a good idea to have a couple machines loaded up with some of the suggested tools — but I’m running out of hardware. Fortunately, this is the kind of stuff that virtualization handles nicely. I’m going to build fluxbuntu and Windows 2000 clients. Fluxbuntu because I’ve been curious about it and Win2K because I have a license.
A nice aspect of virtual clients is that I can move ‘em around to whatever machine I happen to be carrying. One laptop can suddenly become 3 distinct machines. Or I can put a virtual client on my desktop at the office and keep a copy somewhere else for backup. Handy stuff, this virtualization.
As I often do, I looked to VMware for the necessary software.
VMware offers their Player and Server products for free. Player is pretty slick and light-weight, but you can’t create new clients with it (of course there are workarounds…). To create the new clients, I decided to first install Server. When I went to grab it I noticed that there’s a new Beta 2.0 version available so that’s what I went with.
This newer beta version offers the capabilities from before, plus an array of new features—including a broader range of guest operating system support, an intuitive Web-based management interface, and increased memory for greater scalability. With over 3 million downloads worldwide, VMware Server continues to innovate to provide users with a superior introductory experience to virtualization—for Free.
Everything with the new beta is managed in your browser — even the actual running of the client machines. Seems like a good idea and I was pleasantly surprised with the process of creating a new client. However, once that client was running…
I hate it. I especially hate it on my home machine running at 1440 x 900 resolution. I have to disable all sorts of browser address and toolbars just to have a fighting chance of getting a client console above 800×600.
(oops, to be fair: just after I wrote this I found the full-screen mode!)
Tomcat grabbing 250+ MB when a client is running — and never letting it go — is rather annoying as well.
Neat idea, but if you have an older/slower machine or a less than great monitor resolution, spare yourself and stick with the previous version of Server instead. I’m sure it would rock on my work laptop — much more memory and much higher resolution. But I try to be pretty conservative with what I install on that one…
Once I get my two client images built, I’ll be uninstalling Server beta and just running client instead. I may not even keep it around that long — right now I’m very frustrated with it. It won’t boot the Win2k client I had just installed. *sigh*
Anyone had a better experience with the beta? Am I being overly harsh?
Tags: beta, fluxbuntu, virtualization, vmware, VMWare-Player, VMware-Server
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2 Responses to “VMware Server 2.0 beta - First Look”
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Yeh, the management on Server 2.0 is terrible. I had it installed briefly before rolling back to 1.0.4. I hear that you can use the VI 2.5 client to manage server 2.0, but i haven’t dug into it yet to try.
I REALLY hope they fix this before they release it…I work in VMs all day long and having to live in one with the new server would be nightmarishly painful if I had to do it on a daily basis.
(I turned in my corp laptop after virtualizing it, and run the VM on my personal laptop so I don’t have to carry two laptops all the time)
Hey Dave — I’m just glad to hear I’m not the only one not overjoyed with the beta.
I uninstalled it probably 10 minutes after publishing this article and went back to 1.04. Sooo much better!
Interesting note on the client — if you do give it a try, let us know how it goes. That could tip the scales a bit…