On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 4:51 PM, Jeff Gilchrist <jeff.gilchr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 6:04 PM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> VirtualBox is vastly better, so after this change I'll be able to
>> configure these virtual machines with more cores, RAM, and managing
>> them will be much easier.
>
> That is good to know. I have heard about VirtualBox but haven't had
> the chance to try it yet. It is also free is not?
>
> What in particular makes it vastly better?
I'm comparing to VMware server running on a Linux host. I vastly
prefer VirtualBox now, even though I was a diehard VMware user since
1998.
Ways VirtualBox is better then VMware Server:
* Both are free, but VirtualBox is free and open source (GPLv2!),
whereas VMware server is "free" and closed source. It's possible to
buy VMware server + more features for thousands of dollars / year, and
I even considered it, but I *couldn't* figure out what I would get for
my money from the confusing VMware site, despite coming back to it
several times.
* VirtualBox is massively better at supporting OS X than VMware
server: it is *impossible* to use the VMware server console to connect
to remote virtual machines on OS X, since VMware uses a proprietary
browser plugin that is only available for Windows and Linux. In
contrast, VirtualBox uses a standard remote desktop protocol, so it is
easy to connect to running VirtualBox consoles from any operating
system using a range of different remote desktop clients.
* VMware server limits me to 2 cores and 8GB RAM per machine.
VirtualBox has no such limitations. This is a *huge* factor for me,
since the host server has 128GB RAM and 24 cores!
* If a virtual machines runs under VMware server and uses 4GB RAM
(say), then VMware server will silently (and completely hidden)
allocate around 4GB of disk space on the host filesystem. My host
server has 128GB RAM, but only a 70GB hard disk. The net result is
that I can't use the resources I have -- I have to run far less
machines than I could, or give them less RAM. In sharp contrast,
VirtualBox doesn't allocate any "secret" disk space at all.
* The web interface to VMware is extremely flaky and frustrating.
It randomly fails to work with many of my web browsers, I often have
to restart it, and it is clunky to boot. There is no good web
interface to VirtualBox yet, but there is VBoxWeb, which is looks like
it will be good when it is finished. Also, the command line
interface to VirtualBox is amazing; I think it is vastly superior to
VMware Server's. Also, there is even a Python API for scripting
VirtualBox machines. After spending a day learning VirtualBox, I
wrote my own little Python script to automatically start from the
console all of my virtual machines in the background, and open remote
desktop ports for each. I can easily see what is running using
another little script, etc. With VMware server, even starting 20
machines was a tedious and painful exercise (probably if I paid it
would be easier).
* The VirtualBox documentation is much better if one is technically
included. It doesn't "talk down" to me like I feel VMware's
documentation does. It's clear and useful.
* VirtualBox is one program that runs on Solaris, OS X, Linux and
Windows. VMware, in contrast, is several different programs -- VMware
player, VMware workstation, VMware server (and several versions of
that). It can be really confusing and frustrating, with artificial
limitations put on every program so as to extract your money.
* VMware is blatantly commercial (they went public a few years
ago, and last year I think they fired their very techy CEO...). Sun
is also commercial, but they have a strong commitment to open source
-- they are the reason VirtualBox is open source. Of course, I don't
know what will happen with the Oracle acquisition.
* VMware completely stopped working on my main virtualization
server, and despite upgrades, clean installs, etc., I absolutely could
not get it to work again. I had to switch to running it on another
computer temporarily.
Ways VMware is better:
* I think in VMware resizing a disk so it uses less physical space
on ones hard drive seems substantially easier.
* VirtualBox literally just froze my normally rock solid new OS X
laptop, as I wrote this email... :-(
-- William
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