Which is better..........

[Guest richard]

I want to rebuild my laptop as I want to install VMWare server onit as I'm bored but I am undecided as to the base operating system for the laptop. I would normally use Windows XP Pro as thats whats we use at school but I do playaround with linux on occasion at home and had thought about using Ubuntu as the base OS. So I was wondering what you lot would recommend as at the moment my mind won'tfocus on IT related stuff...............

 

[Edited for spelling]

[Geoff]

Our VMWare server is running Ubuntu, as is my desktop. If I need to do anything windows related. I either boot my VMWare windows install or just RDP into a server.

[DSapseid]

I run VMWare on XP Pro

[Ric_]

If you are purely using the machine for running VMs you can of course get away with a minimal install and hence have more resources for your VMs.

[mckeder]

I would personally recommend using a linux version of windows. Uses less resources and a little more stable. Not to mention its free

[CyberNerd]

I'd too go with Linux, as well as the lack of overheads you also get a choice of filesystem. XFS is good for large vmware files whilst NTFS gets fragmented: http://linux-xfs.sgi.com/projects/xfs/papers/xfs_white/xfs_white_paper.html

[Guest Guest]

Can your base OS be headless? If it can you could save on resources and remotely manage it

[m2d2]

Can your base OS be headless? If it can you could save on resources and remotely manage it

That would be the case if Richard was setting up server (e.g. Apache or Samba) but he is thinking more about what to do for a workstation.

[Geoff]

Yes, our VMWare server is headless.

[ajbritton]

linux version of windows

 

My God! Has Bill Gates abandoned all his principles???

[ajbritton]

I know that by default on 32 bit systems (which can address an address space of 4Gb), Windows will allocate 2Gb of virtual address space to the Kernel and 2Gb of virtual address space to user mode processes.

 

This means that even if you have more that 2Gb RAM you need to fiddle with BOOT.INI options such as the /3GB switch.

 

I can see how this would affect the efficiency of VMs on a host with a lot of RAM.

 

Does anyone know how Linux handles this sort of thing or is it a non-issue? Presumably it becomes a non-issue if you are in the 64 bit world anyway.

[Guest richard]

My laptop runs 2 gig of ram so shouldn't have a problem with with the boot ini

[PiqueABoo]

This means that even if you have more that 2Gb RAM you need to..

 

Ermm.. no.

 

For instance VMWare have long said you can make a 3.6GB VMWare guest on a 4GB box without the /3GB switch (because it doesn't map a VMs memory into user address space).

[FN-GM]

I would go with Linux as well, mainly because it uses less resources

[Geoff]

Does anyone know how Linux handles this sort of thing or is it a non-issue?

 

You have the choice of a 2Gb/2Gb split, 3Gb/1Gb or 1Gb/3Gb. Additionally you can also use PAE (if the CPU supports it) and access 16Gb however this will eat double kernel memory for each allocation (as under Windows) so you can run out of kernel memory with certain workloads.

 

Additionally under a Linux VMWare host you have an avenue of attack that is an unrealistic option to Windows VMware hosts. You can have your Linux host running 64bit Linux and run 32bit virtual machines. Windows can do this, however only with full emulation. Which is horrifically slow.

 

If your emulating 64bit VM's on a 64bit host, you can ignore what I just explained and point and laugh at the unfortunate people who have to jump through the hoops.

[ajbritton]

This means that even if you have more that 2Gb RAM you need to..

 

Ermm.. no.

 

For instance VMWare have long said you can make a 3.6GB VMWare guest on a 4GB box without the /3GB switch (because it doesn't map a VMs memory into user address space).

 

That's interesting. You wouldn't have a link would you?

[Geoff]

This means that even if you have more that 2Gb RAM you need to..

 

Ermm.. no.

 

For instance VMWare have long said you can make a 3.6GB VMWare guest on a 4GB box without the /3GB switch (because it doesn't map a VMs memory into user address space).

 

That's interesting. You wouldn't have a link would you?

 

As I said previously, you can use PAE to get round this limit. Giving guest's access to 16Gb of ram.

[contink]

Useful info...

 

I've started playing with VM a bit more lately and I'm reaching the point where I'm tempted but nervous about using the convertor to capture my existing Win2k3 to a guestOS and then wiping it all and starting over with an Ubuntu server as the base.

 

Still not sure about whether to open a seperate guest OS to the dmz but we'll see.

 

 

 

Anyway, back on topic... which flavour of nix' would anyone recommend for a vmware server base.. bearing in mind that security would be the priority and no, not interested in a GUI. Thoughts?

[Geoff]

I'm using a server install of Ubuntu 8.08 Gutsy Gibbon (purely because 6.06 doesn't work properly with my RAID card).

[webman]

I'm using a server install of Ubuntu 8.08 Gutsy Gibbon

 

August 2008 release of Ubuntu, Geoff? 8)

[Geoff]

Getting ahead of myself. I meant 7.10 of course

 

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GutsyGibbon

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GutsyReleaseSchedule

 

I installed from the Tribe 5 installation CD.

[PiqueABoo]

You wouldn't have a link would you?

 

Errm... no, but I'm not making it up.. although my comment on this was too throwaway and a bit crap...

 

I think VMWare uses AWE. That allows a process to allocate lots of nonpaged physical memory to put things in. To access that physical memory you need to write code to map it into into your 32-bit virtual address space. With that bit of d-i-y memory management you can use more physical memory than will fit in virtual memory. Don't know what the overheads are like generally or in any given implementation, but note you avoid some that normal userland virtual memory has (e.g. pages on disk).

 

Certainly when I read about VMWare using AWE wherever it was a few years ago (probably their forums) they didn't suggest you used the /3GB switch... so I just assumed that adding another GB of virtual address space makes no difference to their memory management.

[ajbritton]

AWE sounds a bit like EMS if anyone remembers that!

[Geoff]

Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) are a Windows specific API that uses PAE (thus the machine must support PAE). They are not available to *nix hosts. *nix machines use PAE directly.