Confused: Which is best for home use?

[tdavis80]

Before anyone jumps to a quick answer, please note the following:

1. I have about a dozen+ VM Workstation images that I use in a classroom for different courses. Most are Linux VMs but I have some Windows Server VM images.

2. I am very familiar with Linux and Windows

3. I have about 5 servers on the air at home 100% of the time.

4. I have downloaded and installed ESXi 4 on a spare computer.

Now the questions....


I am looking for a free solution to allow me to run most of my standalone servers as VM slices on something. I 'could' simply run Vista or Windows Server 2003 and run all my images with VM Workstation. Not the best solution but it would work. ESXi looks interesting but it seems only the hyperv is free; the admin module costs money. Am I correct with that observation?

I downloaded VM Server 3.0 beta at xmas time. The beta had lots of problems and I think that product might be dead. When I had tried the 2.0 version of server, it did not support vm v6.5 built VM images.

I plan on running only 1 server at home. I do not mind shutting down the VMs to perform a simple backup of the files.

What are people out there using at home?

[localzuk]

ESXi does not require you to pay for the admin module. You get the basic module for free. You just don't get any fancy features like moving VM's from server to server etc...

Have you looked at Citrix XenServer?

[tdavis80]

Thanks for the response. My experience with VM slices has been with vmWare workstation. It has been a positive experience which is why I am thinking of virtualizing many of my home servers.

Some comments though:

The free ESXi client seems to be vsphere which to the best of my knowledge, does not have an VM import function so I could re-use my existing vm6.5 images. The closest I have found is the fact that 'custom' allows me to say that the disk was already created. Kind of clunky way of doing things.

After reading your message this morning, I checked out some web pages on Xen and Xen Server. How close are the Open Source versions and the Citrix versions?

I keep reading comments that the Xen image needs to be modified to be PV aware. What does that mean? Is it a simple driver issue, much in the same way that vmtools helps vmware?

Thanks for the help!


FYI: I was able to do a lab last week completely using a virtual infrastructure. Much nicer than wasting hours on real hardware.