I seem to have hit a nerve, and maybe hurt your feelings a little. If I did I apologize. That was not my intention. My intention was to point out the general frustration that I have and I believe others have with this product. Maybe I should have not said that it ‘seems’ like a beta product. I should have said that it ‘feels’ like a beta product. This means to me: mostly finished, working, feature complete, able to be used, but not polished.
I am sure you know that there were people that were using windows 7 in their production environment, even though the OS was still in beta. So being used in production does not mean that it no longer feels like a beta product.
Yes the manual explains how to setup a DSN (page 139) and create a database. My question is why does it? Why, when I have had many programs that not only can install SQL express themselves. They can also create the DSN and the Database without my help. Sure they ask me what server the DB is on, and what credentials that I would like it to use, but that’s usually it. In fact I think ( although I am not sure ) that vCenter did just that. If it’s ok for the product manual to tell you how to set up the DSN and create the DB, why not also tell you what tables to create in the DB and the restrictions on those tables, and what they need to be initially populated with for the system to work also. The manual could also tell you what registry entries to make on the server instead of having the installer program do it, does that make it acceptable?
Also if you want to watch this video, which was very good BTW, you can see that the person demoing the install even had a problem: VMware View Proof of Concept Series Part 1: Installation and Initial Configuration
Looking back this is really funny to me for a couple of reasons. I remember when the upgrade from VI3 to VI4 videos came out. I LOVED them. All I had to do was watch the video and press the same buttons he did and I was upgraded! It was great and by far one of the most pain free upgrades I have ever done, and one of the best uses of video I have ever seen. When I watched this video he could not even get the DSN setup right. I believe that at one point he said something to the effect of: forget it. I'm not a DBA and you can just set it up this way, it’s just not recommended for production. Funny thing, I'm not a DBA ether, and I didn't see a requirement for a DBA in the manual ether. It would have been nice if they remembered that there are people out there that use their product that aren’t DBA's. I guess he should have read the manual?
Yes the manual clearly says what versions are supported. Does that mean if they said ‘only supported on windows 2000 server SP1’ that would be ok? Maybe your expectations are not as high as mine, but I have come to have very high expectations of VMWare. They make great stuff! Heck some people that I talk to might think I work for them. I have really enjoyed going to a ‘all praise hyper-v’ show and just picked them to death with what VMWare can do that they can’t. I don’t think I will be invited back . If they had decoupled Composer from the need to be installed on the same computer as the vCenter it would have been fine. I would not have complained. It just seems strange to me that the two groups don’t talk to each other and can’t seem to match up what they are going to support. They could have delayed the roll out of Composer to get it working on the 2k8 R2 64bit platform. That would have been understandable.
My friend thinks that they pushed out this version before it was completely ready, because of the pressure from their competitors. He may be right. I really don’t know. I do know that VMWare will improve the product and polish it up. Again if it’s just ME that expects too much from them, or feels this way then just ignore me. I still love their stuff and will continue to use it, and recommend it. I just think we will just wait for ver 4.x on this one.
Message was edited by: dTardis
