Virtualbox or VMWare

[Gamingphreek]

Running Ubuntu 9.10 x64 on a Lenovo T61 Laptop (Core 2 Duo T8100, 4GB DDR2-800)

I have run both in the past, but not recently.

Does one have a clear advantage over the other right now? I don't believe this processor has Nested Paging support.

I plan on running a *BSD derivative within it and/or perhaps Debian, Solaris, and XP/7

-Kevin

 

[Red Squirrel]

I use virtualbox at home on my servers and it works great. Only downside is it's meant as a desktop app, so you'll want to use VNC and have them all open up in a session, it's not background running like vmware server is.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I love VMWare, I use it for almost everything.

I've never used virtualbox, so I have no good comparison for you.

 

[ViviTheMage]

wow, double post

 

[Nothinman]

I'd say VMware is more compatible so if you can deal with the web interface in 2.0 I'd go for it.

 

[Fox5]

VMware is probably better, but virtualbox is free.

Well, that depends actually. VMware is better for a virtualized server or anything that requires high disk access, but virtualbox has a faster 2d driver, so virtualbox may be better in a single user environment.

 

[xSauronx]

vmware server is free, and the web interface wasnt that bad last i used it.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Which BSD? Open and I think Net have issues with VBox (VBox is buggy). They can work, but not well. And with at least OpenBSD don't expect much help from misc@. FreeBSD should be supported-ish although I haven't tried it personally. I also haven't tried DragonflyBSD on it either, but that would probably be a waste anyways.

 

[child of wonder]

The only caveat with VMware Server 2.0 is the web interface. However, I don't have many issues with it anymore outside of needing to refresh a couple times to get the login to come up.

Otherwise it works awesome running on my Debian AMD64 server.

 

[ultimatebob]

The only caveat with VMware Server 2.0 is the web interface. However, I don't have many issues with it anymore outside of needing to refresh a couple times to get the login to come up.

Otherwise it works awesome running on my Debian AMD64 server.

You don't really need to use the web interface once the virtual server is set up. Just run them as a background process, and use something like Terminal Services or VNC to access the virtual boxes remotely.

You could try using VMWare ESXi as well, if your hardware supports it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The only caveat with VMware Server 2.0 is the web interface. However, I don't have many issues with it anymore outside of needing to refresh a couple times to get the login to come up.

Otherwise it works awesome running on my Debian AMD64 server.

Yeah that was my main reason to switch off of vmware server 2.0. The VI client sorta works but not everything works and even that is a bit flaky as it's not designed for it.

It pretty much got to a point where I could no longer do any function anymore. Could not even create a new vm or launch the console. I really don't get why they dropped support for having a real client.

 

[child of wonder]

You don't really need to use the web interface once the virtual server is set up. Just run them as a background process, and use something like Terminal Services or VNC to access the virtual boxes remotely.

You could run using VMWare ESXi as well, if your hardware supports it.

Absolutely. I RDP or SSH into my virtual servers. The web interface is just used for configuring VMs, snapshots, creating/deleting VMs, etc.

If you fiddle around a lot with your VMs then the web interface can be quite troublesome. But if you mainly set up a couple VMs and then leave them alone for months, the web interface really isn't an issue.

Once you learn how to do some of those functions from the command line, it becomes even less of an issue as you can script them.

For example, my VMs are backed up nightly via a simple bash script that snapshots the VMs, copies the .vmx and flat.vmdk, edits the copied .vmx so it will look for the flat.vmdk and not the snapshot, tars and gzips the files, then removes the snapshot. 3 VMs of about 60GB worth of vmdks are backed up in an hour and gzipped down to approx 20GB all while online.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Absolutely. I RDP or SSH into my virtual servers. The web interface is just used for configuring VMs, snapshots, creating/deleting VMs, etc.

If you fiddle around a lot with your VMs then the web interface can be quite troublesome. But if you mainly set up a couple VMs and then leave them alone for months, the web interface really isn't an issue.

Once you learn how to do some of those functions from the command line, it becomes even less of an issue as you can script them.

For example, my VMs are backed up nightly via a simple bash script that snapshots the VMs, copies the .vmx and flat.vmdk, edits the copied .vmx so it will look for the flat.vmdk and not the snapshot, tars and gzips the files, then removes the snapshot. 3 VMs of about 60GB worth of vmdks are backed up in an hour and gzipped down to approx 20GB all while online.

Wow did not realize it was that easy to do a live backup. Yet here we are at work spending hundreds of thousands for software that will do it. The companies that make that software probably have an evil laugh every time they make a sale.

 

[Nothinman]

Wow did not realize it was that easy to do a live backup. Yet here we are at work spending hundreds of thousands for software that will do it. The companies that make that software probably have an evil laugh every time they make a sale.

Because in most cases it's not that simple. Even if the data is consistent it's the equivalent to a full backup every time so unless you've got a very small number of servers without much data on them it's no feasible. And there's other details to consider, for example how do you restore a single mailbox from an Exchange server like that?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Because in most cases it's not that simple. Even if the data is consistent it's the equivalent to a full backup every time so unless you've got a very small number of servers without much data on them it's no feasible. And there's other details to consider, for example how do you restore a single mailbox from an Exchange server like that?

You'd still do file level backups though. At least that's what we do. We only do vranger maybe once a week or so but file backups every day.

 

[Nothinman]

You'd still do file level backups though. At least that's what we do. We only do vranger maybe once a week or so but file backups every day.

Exactly, so you can't just do snapshot backups. You need a full-blown backup tool like Backup Exec with things like the Exchange and SQL connectors to give you the granularity in restores. Snapshots are good for DR, but not great for most other backup/restore scenarios.

 

[child of wonder]

Exactly, so you can't just do snapshot backups. You need a full-blown backup tool like Backup Exec with things like the Exchange and SQL connectors to give you the granularity in restores. Snapshots are good for DR, but not great for most other backup/restore scenarios.

Naturally, my method is not meant for a production environment, just a handy way to back up some VMs at home on VMware Server.

 

[LuckyTaxi]

I run Vbox on my ubuntu desktop at home. I love the feature where you can resize the screen resolution of your guest OS just by dragging the vbox client window! I dont know if it works with a linux guest OS but I run windows inside a VM and it's awesome.

The only thing I dont like is there's no way for me to clone my VM!!!! I found an obscure way of doing it (gotta find link), but I plan on going back to vmware workstation once I find the time to re-install my windows vm