Hi everyone, Some folks recall my recent thread on `shared disk' I couldn't implement this with VirtualBox because I needed to share a cooked file, not a raw device; VirtualBox apparently allows you to share a raw device.
I turned to `VMware Server' for my needs. It's working. Here is my experience with `WMware Server' Summary ------- Make VirtualBox's bridging easier and you have a hands down app killer. I realize my need to have a shared cooked file may be an outlier but it'd be super nice to have VirtualBox support it. Environment ----------- Host O/S: openSUSE 11.0 - latest patchset Guest O/S: CentOS 4.7 + Oracle RAC 10 r2 Installation ------------ You have the choice of either an RPM or a tar-ball. I chose the RPM. Installation was easy. Similar to VirtualBox. Network Configuration --------------------- The initial configuration is handled via a Perl script. It covers network setup too. Setting up bridging is _very_ simple with VMware. This is an area where VirtualBox is deficient. If I were King at Sun/VirtualBox, I'd spend some engineering cycles to make Bridge-setup easy. I realize it's documented but most people don't want to wade through documentation. GUI --- 1.0.7 ~~~~~ The VMware 1.0.7 GUI does well when you need to add devices to a VM. Where it really hurts is when it comes to displaying a VM. All VM's are displayed in a parent window and the VM's are tabbed within it. I posted to a Forum and was told there's no way to detach a tabbed window from the parent window. The above is a huge productivity loss. I'd have to use some remote desktop client in order to be able to quickly switch between two VM's. With VirtualBox, each VM starts as its own Window. I have a 1920x1200 display and it's easy to run two VM's side by side. 2.0 ~~~ A new Web Interface has been introduced with 2.0. It installs Tomcat on your Host O/S which chews up additional memory. The interface is slow and klunky. It's a huge step backward. There's a Virtual Interface client which can be used to side-step the Web Interface. The catch? It's an MS-DOS application. Perhaps I can virtualize it in my VirtualBox VM. :p The irony kills me! Startup ------- Starting up two VM's is a very slow process. Even from a `paused' state. I monitor my machine with `gkrellm' and my disk drives are hardly being pushed on a resumption. With VirtualBox, resuming a `paused' machine is fast. The disk drive where the saved image resides is hit hard, which is the way it should be. Execution --------- I don't have any hard metrics as I am not comparing two similar VM's in VirtualBox versus VMware but VMware appears noticeably slower. -- Pablo Sanchez - Blueoak Database Engineering, Inc Ph: 819.459.1926 Fax: 760.860.5225 (US) _______________________________________________ vbox-users mailing list [email protected] http://vbox.innotek.de/mailman/listinfo/vbox-users
