VMs are a great way to go depending on the job(s) you need to do. As it happens a lot of jobs (e.g. DNS) are not particularly compute intensive, so it's a great way to stretch resources. We find we can run 3 or 4 virtual machines on each physical machine.
We used VMware from the get-go, but did not get many of the paid-for bells and whistles. VMware can become pretty expensive, where other solutions (e.g. Proxmox) has an advantage because of open source.
The other consideration is containers, which can be thought of as VM-lite. Containers provide almost all of the advantages of VMs with a significantly lighter load on the hardware. As a result, you can load up more applications on less hardware. The leading contender in the container space is Kubernetes and it's also open source.
Pick your poison with someone you know who can go over your requirements.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
I have decided I needed to get on the VM train. I know, I am only 15 years behind. Honestly, till now I haven't had a compelling reason.
I want something that will at least do some monitoring of VM's, backups, snapshots, etc. Managed upgrading would be great but not as big a priority for me (at least I don't think so).
Since I don't know what I don't know, I am asking the experienced crowd.
It seems the two real choices are VMWare and Zen. Are there others? Commercial support seems nice, is it worth paying for? What I will run is important for sure.
I spent a few hours last night and I more confused now than when I started.
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