> I'm considering moving some of my services into virtual hosts, but
> I've never used VMware before. Perhaps one of you could be kind enough
> to explain their products to me? Specifically I'm interested in:
> * Being able to migrate a VM between hosts for High Availability
> * Clustering VMs on both 32 bit and 64 bit hardware.
> * Managing the whole shebang from a single workstation.
> * Have mostly FreeBSD and some Ubuntu and MS Windows VMs.
They keep changing their product line, but this is how I remember it -
- $150 VMWare Workstation - if your host OS is Windows XP or Vista
- $0 VMWare Server - if your host OS is Windows Server (2003 or
2008), or enterprise linux (RHEL, Suse, etc)
- $80 VMWare Fusion - same as workstation, but for mac
- $xxx VMWare ESX - Like Server, with a million more tools and
features. For true enterprise.
If you want to do a live migration from one head to another, you require
ESX.
Not sure how much this will help, but - I barely see the point of
"migration" as it were. In order to do a live migration (without shutting
down the VM) both heads must have access to shared storage where the VM
resides. That is - the VM must reside on disk on a SAN. You can't do a
live migration from disk to some other disk.
That being said - if it's ok to shutdown the VM, then anything is possible.
You can get VMWare Server for free (runs on Windows Server, or Linux) and
you can simply copy/move the VM files from one computer to another. This
way, even just using free software, you can easily migrate your VM from one
set of hardware to another. I've done this before - and - there's a slight
fib here. I needed to text-edit a config file in the VM directory.
Supposedly this extra step is not needed if you're using ESX. I hear (but
have not personally done) that ESX can shutdown the VM, migrate it, modify
the config file as necessary, and start it up again at the destination in
essentially a single click.
Also - Since you say you're running Ubuntu - It isn't officially a supported
OS (at least in vmware server & workstation - perhaps different in ESX?)
When you install vmware tools, you'll have to select the target OS, and the
closest match you'll have is "generic linux." I think it's a safe
assumption you'll get it to work, but just take it under advisement.
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