Migrating off Vmware-Server, but where to?

[Rich Braun]

Derek Atkins asked about migrating off VMware Server 2.0.  (I used that for a
while last year).  Check out VirtualBox, as I noted earlier: it directly
addresses at least 6 out of 8 questions posted, and it'd be easy to craft
scripts and a wrapper page to address the first 2.

Matthew Gillen asked for clarification about my benchmark comparing ext4 vs.
LVM storage:  I'd guess one minor performance penalty of ext4 is its blocksize
(4K) vs. that of LVM (4M is default), but that can't be the full explanation
for the substantial difference I saw (and that any of y'all should be able to
observe).  When I create a vm, I always preallocate its storage, and yes,
VirtualBox does support the alternative (growable).  I wouldn't know anything
about ext3-compatbility mode; my ext4 volumes are generated under OpenSuse via
'mkfs -t ext4'.

Alas I haven't tried KVM so I can't comment on the comparison with VMware
Server (which sux and as noted is end-of-lifed), VMware ESXi (which is solid
and high-performing but more of a full-time engineering job to administer,
costs money, and doesn't provide a standalone UI), and VirtualBox.

-rich