[Gloucs] Type 1 hypervisor.

[Glyn Davies]

The esx hypervisor is free and so is the vsphere client. It's only when you
want vmotion, fancy patching tools etc that you need to pay for vcentre and
then its paying for a licence for the features you want. Seems to be a good
hacking community on the VMWare forums to home brew capabilities you would
have to otherwise pay for.
On 4 Jun 2011 17:46, "Will Rendell" <will at rendell.me.uk> wrote:
> Hi just catching up on my emails while sat in Asda car park waiting for
the
> wife! And thought that I would point out that VMWare do a free version of
> their ESXi product.
>
> Just thought I would throw it into the pot.
>
> Regards
>
> Will
> On 1 Jun 2011 09:02, "Anthony Edward Cooper" <aecooper at coosoft.plus.com>
> wrote:
>> Yes Virtual box is a very good product. I have increasingly become
>> less impressed with VMware. I just can't see the point in VMware
>> Workstation, which you pay for (it's a bit like the old vmware server
>> edition with most of the disadvantages of player), VMware player is
>> increasingly demanding newer hardware/processor extensions (I can't use
>> version 3, I suspect this is to do with the virtual console) and VMware
>> server is generally fine (but only one a largish machine and the Web
>> front end sucks big time (can be very unreliable)). Their ESX products
>> are very good but you have to pay for that.
>>
>> Virtual box on the other had has a very light foot print and just
>> works. One can disconnect from the console of the machine and run
>> headless (with the non-free RDP extensions).
>>
>> I evaluated both VMware server 2 an VirtualBox 3.1.x - non free
>> (this time last year). The only reason I went with VMware server was
>> this was for my machine at work and:
>> 1) The licence for VMware server would be free for the company and
>> VirtualBox would not be (with the extensions). However for home use this
>> is completely irrelevant as the business edition is free for home use.
>> 2) We do use VMware ESX at work and using VMware server 2 means
>> that the VMs created on that product would work directly inside ESX
>> (which I have done).
>>
>> Otherwise I would have gone with VirtualBox as it uses less
>> resources and according to postings suffers less from processor creep.
>>
>> If you go for VMware and you want to run VMs on your machine even if
>> you are logged out of the host and connect into the VMs via
>> X11/RDP/VNC/NoMachine then go for VMware server (it's like a poor man's
>> ESX server). You could try ESXi? (free for home use) but server will
>> probably suffice. If you just want to run up a couple of VMs on the
>> desktop and access their desktop consoles directly then player should
>> give better graphics performance as it is non-detachable and renders
>> more directly.
>>
>> But if you go the player route you might as well use VirtualBox (VB
>> can run headless/detached you just have to do it from the command line
>> rather than a `nice' GUI).
>>
>> As for Xen, does this really count as virtualisation software or
>> more like Solaris's Zones? You need quite specific hardware extensions
>> to run this - albeit readily available in modern processors (may not be
>> available in the mobility range). I have not tried it as I don't have
>> the hardware that supports these extensions. Also Xen seems to be going
>> out of favour.
>>
>> Tony.
>>
>> Steve Fraser wrote:
>>> Copied and pasted directly from the VirtualBox website:
>>>
>>> "Before version 4.0, there were two editions of VirtualBox: a full
binary
>>> containing all features and an "Open Source Edition" (OSE) with source
> code.
>>> With version 4.0, there is only one version any more, which is open
> source,
>>> and the closed-source components have been moved to a separate extension
>>> pack."
>>>
>>> "The binaries are released under the terms of the GPL version 2." (This
> is
>>> referring to the open source binaries)
>>>
>>> And this is what is says about the extension pack: "Support for USB 2.0
>>> devices, VirtualBox RDP and PXE boot for Intel cards. See this chapter
> from
>>> the User Manual for an introduction to this Extension Pack. The
Extension
>>> Pack binaries are released under the VirtualBox Personal Use and
> Evaluation
>>> License (PUEL)."
>>>
>>> Hope that clears things up for you.
>>>
>>> I would also recommend VirtualBox, it will do exactly what you want. You
>>> will probably want the features in the expansion pack too.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: gloucs-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk
>>> [mailto:gloucs-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of GEOFF BAGLEY
>>> Sent: 31 May 2011 18:21
>>> To: Gloucestershire LUG
>>> Subject: Re: [Gloucs] Type 1 hypervisor.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: Matthew Phillips
>>>> Virtualbox-ose stands for
>>>> OpenSourceEdition!
>>>>
>>>> Matthew Phillips
>>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Matthew.
>>>
>>> Please can you tell me what license they use, and is it still Oracle ?
>>>
>>> The attraction of xen and qemu is the GPL.
>>>
>>> Geoff
>>>
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>>
>>
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