I heart VMWare
In a remote office I had a RAID5 collapse. The OS was Dapper Linux running VMWare server. On it was a VM of a Win2K3 file/print server. I was able to talk the secretary through booting the borken server from Knoppix, then I was able to remotely login and copy the VM to a spare Windows XP workstation, install VMWare on it, launch the VM, and blammo everything is back to normal from the user's perspective. They don't know their "server" is running off some random workstation in the office. I know VMWare performance isn't anything close to native speeds, but still, I heart VMWare.
getting systems back up fast feels great.
all hail the virtual machines!
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Where is the VM world going? Does anyone out there have experience in the following VM worlds?
Ry - we're totally wanting to to VMWare here for everything from server virtualization to development and test workstation virtualization. I think you and I discussed an application mode TS solution the other day for VPN-like access. Have you tried running VMWare images on that? Seems a little redundant but, benefit could be not having to maintain TS server with unnecessary software installed. What do you think?
yes, one of our Win2k3 servers has a special program on it, which local staff access over the LAN. I didn't want remote users using RDC to login directly to the server, so I installed VMWare and setup a WinXP VM on it. For the remote user it appears as if she has her very own computer on the network. I used group policy to lockdown the XP VM so the user can only get to the special program and no other network resources. Seems to work pretty good so far.
One thing I've noticed with VMWare, is it works great for low-CPU stuff, like file server, print server, etc. But once you start trying to RDC into multiple VMs on the same physical machine, then things start slowing down.
By any chance is your webserver running in a VM, or perhaps your database server? your clock is wrong....I've found it to be non-trivial to get the clock to sync and stay sync'd properly.
I too have found that multiple users logging in remotely causes performance to bog down the machine. This is especially true of older OSs like windows 2000 (a real dog). It's not so true of newer OS versions, but it still exists.
I had a VM crash on me. Crash and burn. The log dump was pretty narly. It was a Win2k3 server VM. I had to rebuild from scratch. Made me nervous about putting critical 'one-of-a-kind' stuff in a VM. But, that's why I have backups!
i take it back. Did you fix it? The clock is correct now, but looks like other, older entries are wonky as far as the date/time goes..
perhaps I just need a nap
yeah....a nap.....
No, this site is running off Bluehost.