vmwarez.com
           -Where Virtualization is a Reality!

VMware server is sure to be a huge boost for the virtualization industry. I was really Jones'n to install it this morning when I saw that they had release it... But I was at work and I use VMware Workstation pretty heavily and from past experience, I'm pretty certain that both cannot co-exist on the same PC.

So, I waited till I got home and made my first attempt on my laptop. Here's the nifty splash screen:

Now, I got a little further than that, but not as far as I would have liked. The install on XP is truly very simple. It is just as easy as ANY other windows app. But there is one thing to consider. One is that they expect that you are installing it on a server OS...

<Side Thought>:
They "officially" only support it on a server platform, but I could not find anything in their license saying that you cannot run it on a non-server platform. OK, that made me think... Just what is a server platform? In the windows world, the lines are very clear. XP or 2000Pro are not. 2003 Server or 2000 Server are. How about Linux? I suppose anything can be considered a server in that world? I wonder if it is supported on LinSpire? Anyway...
</Side Thought>

While server does use a regular "windows app" to manage itself. It can also rely on IIS (Not sure what it does on Linux, prolly Apache?). That is where this evenings adventures ended. I ran the "custom" setup instead of the "complete" or "typical" just because I like to see what I may be missing out on... and here it is:

Without IIS installed, you'd miss out on a web-based way to manage it. So, just so I can see it all, I stopped the install and will install IIS before proceeding. I'll get it going again after I install IIS on my laptop. Check back soon!

VMware has released the free replacement for GSX. This new product has all the old features and more as far as I can tell. I only demo'd GSX once and that was a long time ago... but when VMware introduced the first beta of Server, one big thing that was missing when comparing it to GSX was some form of central manageablity. With GSX, you could manage your physical servers (and, therefore, your virtual servers) with Virtual Center. And this new, free version of VMware server did not have that ability... Till now, anyway. Although VMware Server is free, if you want to manage it with Virtual Center, you have to pay for the VC agent. Which is, in my estimation, very fair. It requires VC1.4, which means that you will be able to manage your Server and Pre-3 ESX deployments in one place. VC2 does not support managing VMware Server. And just like GSX, VMotion is not an option. But, really, Server is not meant to be ESX, is it?

Here's what VMware has to say about Server's features:

VMware Server is a free virtualization product for Windows and Linux servers with enterprise-class support and VirtualCenter management. VMware Server is a robust yet easy to use server virtualization product and is based on proven virtualization technology, which has been used by thousands of customers for more than six years. VMware Server:

• Runs on any standard x86 hardware
• Supports 64-bit guest operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Solaris
• Can be managed by VMware VirtualCenter to efficiently provision, monitor and manage infrastructure from a central management console
• Supports two-processor Virtual SMP, enabling a single virtual machine to span multiple physical processors
• Runs on a wider variety of Linux and Windows host and guest operating systems than any server virtualization product on the market
• Captures entire state of a virtual machine and rolls back at any time with the click of a single button
• Installs like an application, with quick and easy, wizard-driven installation
• Quick and easy, wizard-driven virtual machine creation
• Opens VMware or Microsoft virtual machine format and Symantec LiveState Recovery images with VM Importer
• Supports Intel Virtualization Technology
• Protects investment with an easy upgrade path to VMware Infrastructure

And my favorite thing that they say about VMware Server is this... I'd say it myself, but they really did it best to begin with:

Try VMware Server as the first step to VMware Infrastructure
VMware Server is an ideal starting point for users to experience the benefits of virtualization with the knowledge that your investment will be protected and easily migrated to VMware Infrastructure. VMware Infrastructure allows entire industry-standard infrastructure farms to be managed as a shared utility and dynamically allocated to different business units or projects. VMware Infrastructure provides comprehensive virtualization, management, resource optimization, application availability and operational automation capabilities in an integrated offering. View a comparison between VMware Server and VMware Infrastructure.

Click here to visit the official VMware Server site... and download it today!

So, on Friday, we installed ESX 3 on vm3. We don't have the HBAs yet and will probably re-install ESX 3 once we get the new hardware in. We were really just playing around to see how it would go. The first time, I left the service console's IP address to DHCP. Bad idea.

Trying to get it to be statically assigned was a pain. There may have been an easier way, but we ended up just re-installing ESX 3. That whole process only takes about 15 minutes and is as simple as installing a simple application in windows. Just agree to everything and it is done... except for the IP, have your static ready :). The hang up with changing the IP from DHCP to static was with the new Virtual Infrastructure Client. It didn't seem to want to let us do it. Back when we were using the bovine interface (MUI) on ESX 2.5, it was way easier.

Anyway, now vm3 is running ESX3. I have the virtual infrastructure client installed on my PC. It seems to co-habitate just fine with Virtual Center 1.3. Before installing it, I experimented in a Virtual Machine running XP Pro. It seemed to all be going just fine till we got to the licensing part. I installed the stand-alone Licensing server on our existing VirtualCenter server. Another bad idea, I guess. After much horsing around, we added the host based license to the server. Seems it may be better to do the licensing server along with the VC2 server install. We'll see.

Next step is to get virtual center 2 installed. I wonder if we can upgrade our existing VC1.3 instance so that we don't lose any historical data... not that it really matters. In fact, I think I'd rather have a clean install than have to wonder if this problem or that is caused by a faulty upgrade. Who knows? Anyone out there have any experience with any of this? Comments are always welcome!

Previous: VMware Virtual Infrastructure Upgrade Underway...

Next: Coming Soon!

We officially started our upgrade from ESX 2.5 to Vi3 on Friday. First let me give you a run-down on what we have and what our goals are. We started with 3 Dell 2850 Dual Xeon 3.6 Servers, 8GB of RAM and 2 36GB drives. They all had the two built-in NICs and we added a Dual-NIC card. For Storage, we're using an EMC CX-300 with 15x 146GB drives and two McData FC Switches. When we started, we only needed two servers, but Dell was running a special - Buy 2 get 1 free. So, we only had 2 in production. The third one did not come with the HBAs either... just the box, processors, memory & drives.

Just to make this easy, we call the first two servers that have been in production, "vm1 & vm2" The third server we'll call "vm3."

The plan was to add the HBAs and the VMware ESX license to vm3 when we found we were getting close to reaching capacity on the first two. This lasted about a year or so before we noticed that we needed to turn up vm3. Mostly because of our mail server. We're thinking now that we just need to move it back to the physical world. Anyway, we got our upgrade to VI3 the other day for our existing 2 servers and will be buying a VI3 license & HBAs for vm3 on Monday. Now we have what looks like an easy way to do the migration to VI3 from ESX 2.5.

The plan is to get vm3 up and running, move the virtual servers that are running on vm2 over to vm3. Then rebuild vm2 with VI3, move the virtual servers that are running on vm1 to the newly rebuilt vm2, then rebuild vm1. Once that is all done, we'll let DRS take over and decide where the virtual machines need to run. We'll have 21.6GHz and 24GB of RAM for it to use. Woo hoo!

Next: Virtual Infrastructure Upgrate Part II