All,
I'm working on defining a series of tests and need a platform for conducting these tests.
When vmware released vmware server for free I immediately abandoned my vmware workstation fixation and started using server exclusively.
WIth the upcoming tests I'm wondering if perhaps it's a good time to go back to workstation - since 6 is out. I am however curious what people think of vmware workstation 6, and also if anyone has in depth experience with XEN? Any comments are welcome.
Depends on what you are using it for.
Workstation is a user-mode program. It runs while you are logged on, and it won't run when you are logged off. So, it isn't well suited to long-running applications. It isn't appropriate (or even allowed by the licensing) to run Web or application servers in a Workstation session. By comparison, Server runs as a service independent of any particular user login. You connect a client GUI to a running session as required, and you can connect to sessions on remote Server machines as well.
Workstation is a more appropriate choice if you are doing software testing primarily. In particular, you can create snapshots of your system as you are testing, and then revert to any of those snapshots as required. That can be a lot faster than having to do a from-scratch system setups for each part of your testing.
VMware Workstations offers the following (this list is not necessarily complete)
* Multiple snapshots
* Cloning
* Teams + PVNs
* Movie recordingVMware Server provides
* Remote administration capabilities (via UI consoles and a web interface)
* The ability to run VMs as services after the host powers on
*VMware Server does not support multiple snapshots, cloning, teams, or movie capture.
I have some customers running XEN on their blades, but do not use it in house.
I meeting with one of the XEN developers this weekend - I'll drop it into the conversation D
jhooker,
Keep me posted.