ARTICLE: Tom's HW - Virtualization explored

[kingneutron]

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33313/140/

[[

For our example we'll create a 10 GB virtual machine on an Ubuntu-based Linux box.

VMware is also available for Windows, but, in my personal opinion, it really defeats the purpose of running virtualized machines if you're going to do it in Windows. We are looking for an efficient foundation and Linux is a lot leaner than Windows.

I believe the better solution is to have a small footprint host, and leave extra resources for the multiple guests. In addition, Linux is free which means you can you have it on all of your pieces of hardware (desktops + notebooks machines) without having to use up your licenses.

]]

[continuum]

Dave - do you think it is worth reading ?

I don't - I think that most of us know better than this author.

For example he propagates the mythos that Linux is the better host for VMware

[kingneutron]

// Refuses to rise to teh bait

/// Quietly Continues using Teh Superior OS 😛

[RDPetruska]

/// Quietly Continues using Teh Superior OS 😛

You have VMware running on QNX, really?

[kingneutron]

--Naw, but I \*did* get it running nicely on a 200MHz box.

// Still waiting for FreeBSD hosts

[continuum]

Hey - we can agree on FreeBSD as the best OS

[JDLangdon]

I believe the better solution is to have a small

footprint host, and leave extra resources for the

multiple guests.

Does anyone have a listing of bare minimum packages needed in order to run VMware Server on a Linux host?

Jason

[kingneutron]

o Install Debian Stable Netinstall (or XUbuntu 6.06 LTS)

http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/#netinst-stable

http://www.xubuntu.org/get#dapper

o apt-get install build-essential

o apt-get install fluxbox icewm # Window managers, lightweight

See:

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=424107&#424107

--Don't worry too much about "minimal". Give root " / " (Reiserfs,noatime) 5-6GB disk, and put all your VMs on separate disk(s) -- or at least a sep partition -- away from the OS install.

i.e. have a separate /mnt/vmware ; JFS (noatime) filesystem is recommended.