Desktop Virtualization with VMware Player and Workstation (Linux.com)
More and more organizations are consolidating physical hardware using virtualization. But virtualization technology and tools aren't limited to big-dollar corporations. With the free-as-in-beer VMware Player, and the very cheap VMware Workstation, you too can use this fancy technology to utilize the processing horsepower of cheap multi-core hardware available off-the-shelf."
Posted Jan 11, 2007 22:12 UTC (Thu)
by nigelm (subscriber, #622)
[Link] (2 responses)
However I must admit I have trouble working out from VMWare's information exactly the differences between various parts of their line up.
Posted Jan 12, 2007 2:04 UTC (Fri)
by gbouro (guest, #30593)
[Link]
The "workstation" on the other hand is more of a developer's/architect's tool in that it allows a bit more customization and, more important, easy creation of clones and snapshots.
Posted Jan 18, 2007 19:55 UTC (Thu)
by jschrod (subscriber, #1646)
[Link]
Principally, Workstation is an application that is started by a user. When the user logs out, it must be terminated. On a laptop, suspend-to-ram of the host system works (well, most of the time. :-)
Whereas Server is a service that's started at boot time. One has a client program that connects to virtual machines that run in this server. This means one can have a VM running without being logged in. (For example, currently I have a Win2003 server test setup running on a system even though nobody is logged in there.) Server has severe problems to keep its VM time current on some SMP systems, though, which makes it unusable in many circumstances.
Hardware access is supposed to be better for a Workstation. But I assume that depends on what one does with the VM. Since I don't need it for games and multimedia work, Server is sufficient for almost all of my tasks.
Workstation comes with commercial support, Server doesn't. But, honestly, if you're not a big and important EMC customer, don't hold your breath for the paid support. Your boss might like it, though. The newsgroups are very helpful, as usual, but that's the same for Workstation and for Server.
I hope this supplies some information. (I'm not connected to VMware, btw; but I use it since the very first beta test program.)
Joachim
Why didn't he mention the free (as in beer) VMWare Server (or at least more than just a passing mention)?VMWare Server
Unless I am missing something there seems to be little extra in the VMWare Workstation package over VMWare Server (other than you can get a boxed package and pay for it).
They are different beasts. VM's running under "server" can be accessed over the network and migrated to other servers (using a non free management tool). VMWare Server
The most important difference for users is probably: Workstation does multiple snapshots, have easy cloning capabilities, and can define "teams" of workstations that are handled together. The latter comes handy when one tests distributed applications.VMWare Server