Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register) [LWN.net]

Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register)

Posted Apr 4, 2006 7:40 UTC (Tue) by eskild (subscriber, #1556)
In reply to: Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register) by Mortaous
Parent article: Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register)

Yep, GSX is a fine piece of software. The only real issue I have with it is that particularly disk I/O seems to hurt a *lot*. One virtual server can pretty much starve out the other machines by monopolizing the disk.

Where I work we have 7 virtual servers on a dual Xeon 2.8GHz with serveral gigs of RAM, and it has worked well for years. We moved sites around a year ago, so back then we just suspended the virtual machines, powered down the host, moved, powered up and simply resumed the machines. We have uptimes approaching a year and a half on some of those virtual servers.

The virtual servers are a mix of Linux and Windows and the host system runs at an average load of around 3 during working hours.

With the new, free, VmWare Server coming up, which replaces GSX, we'll do this even more. We've also started using VmWare Player when people with a Windows workstation need a local Linux machine for a while: We have a std. setup that we just clone and download to the workstation. Hey, presto! The only real problem is the amount of time it takes to transfer around 4GB of virtual machine+virtual disks to the workstation disk.

VmWare is cool. Its slickness of operation is what Xen should aim for.

(Log in to post comments)