Want to dive into vmware. Where to start?

[blackangst1]

Im looking at diving into vmware, but honestly dont know where to start. And by that, what would be a good program to use for a beginner? Are there any free alternatives?

Im currently running Win7 Ultimate. Any advice would be helpful

 

[TheELF]

WMware player is free and so is virtualbox, what exactly do you want to do with an VM?

 

[blackangst1]

WMware player is free and so is virtualbox, what exactly do you want to do with an VM?

Id like to install another OS, prolly Linux, as a sandbox of sorts. Id like network connectivity, and to be able to play with it.

 

[MustISO]

Start with VMware player to get some experience. I use VMware workstation at home, the license is cheap and it gives a lot of flexibility.

 

[Ketchup]

Here is a nice little tutorial if you want to run Ubuntu on VMware player:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/11287/how-to-run-ubuntu-in-windows-7-with-vmware-player/

VMware Player is my favorite of the freebies.

 

[blackangst1]

Thanks guys Ill try out VMWare player.

 

[lucia]

Well I'm a beginner using a Windows 7 laptop with Ubuntu Server on VMWare Player for three weeks. I’m fairly happy that I have had not one single X-Window crash. Suspend and Resume is flawless.

 

[Kaido]

Download these:

1. VMware Player
2. ESXi

VMware Player is for having a virtual machine (VM) on your desktop (the host). Pretty much, you slice off some CPU cores & RAM for the virtual machine, so if you have a quad-core CPU with 2 gigs of RAM, you could give your virtual machine 2 cores & 2 gigs of RAM, then you assign it some hard drive space, which it keeps in a file (default is a growing file, so if you make a 60gb virtual hard drive, it's only as big as what is actually installed rather than being a full 60gb size right off the bat).

You can run as many virtual machines as your machine allows. At work, I use a few different virtual machines on my host (Win7). One is a work VM with all of my work stuff like Exchange & whatnot, one is for a dummy domain user for testing network changes, and one is a throwaway that I use for checking virus files or testing new software. I keep my VM's on a separate small SSD drive (you can get a 240gb for $99 these days, if you really want to get into it), which is handy for running them fast because then you're not doing your host OS read/write on the same drive as your VM virtual drive read/write, which can clog things up if you're doing a lot of booting & file saving or reading in your virtual machine.

ESXi is pretty cool if you have a spare 64-bit computer lying around. Rather than using Windows as your host, you install ESXi as the OS on the computer & run it headless (like a server, no monitor or anything), then remotely connect to your server via Remote Desktop. Computer requirements are listed on page 13 here:

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/...center-server-55-installation-setup-guide.pdf

This is fun to do because you can virtualize all kinds of stuff - a Windows machine for doing downloads, a media server for streaming videos, a security camera server, a firewall like pfSense or Untangle, a DIY domain setup using Zentyal, the list is endless. Really fun to tinker with, without having to physically setup yet another computer just to play around with a particular OS.

 

[zir_blazer]

Any reason why I never hear Xen in these Threads? Enterprise-level Type I Hypervisor, Open Source, and free.

 

[11thHour]

Is it possible to run vmware inside vmware?

 

[imagoon]

Is it possible to run vmware inside vmware?

Yup.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Any reason why I never hear Xen in these Threads? Enterprise-level Type I Hypervisor, Open Source, and free.

Because compared to setting up VMware, setting up Xen is like smacking yourself in the nuts with a claw hammer. And the management tools are (last I looked) all linux based.

Windows/Microsoft trained IT people, who like easy installation and slick GUIs, are why ESX and Hyper-V have 56% and 28% of the virtualization market, respectively.

Your server might run Linux, but it's probably managed from a Win7 box by a guy who doesn't know what "ls" does.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yup.

Don't forget to set NICs to promiscuous mode - enabled.

You can also run ESX inside Virtualbox, if you're feeling naughty. :hmm: