Virtualization recommendation

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 10:57:35AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> The question for the group is should I run XEN as the virtualization engine 
> (built in to SuSE 10) or VMWare (vmware player and vmware server are now 
> free). 

I have played ever so slightly with each and am resolved to get good
with Xen and put a slew of servers on a single Ubuntu box in my
basement.  Vmware has the advantage of being a complete computer which
makes setting up a guest very easy (just install).  Xen is more
difficult (more cutting edge), but the result is supposed to be a lot
faster.

Graphics are more difficult with Xen, I think you have to use VNC.
Vmware, in contrast, will go full screen and look very much like the
native thing.

Also consider Qemu.  It is very simple to try.  It is a bit like an
opensource, simpler Vmware.  Download the free (but not open source)
accelerator and it is supposed to be about as fast as the completely
closed source Vmware.

Vmware can be had for free, but they keep sending me
phishing-compatible e-mails that say the version I downloaded has
expired, but I haven't been using it and overwrote it, so I don't
know.


-kb