I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back

<rant>

Back in May I posed the question asking why people liked VMWare's virtualization offerings over Microsoft's. I got some decent feedback, but nothing that made me switch. So I got both VMWare Server (equivalent to Virtual Server 2005 R2, both also being $0.00) and VMWare Workstation 6 (equivalent to VirtualPC 2007, except VPC is free and Workstation is $200). I went back and forth... kicking the tires here and there but never really could ~~make~~ justify the jump.

Until this week...

I [used to] run both Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 & VirtualPC 2007. VS was on the server where I did all my virtualization work when I was working out of my home office, but used VPC2007 on the laptop when I was remote teaching or presenting or doing whatever outside the home. I've been having issues with the admin site for VS over the last few weeks, but early on this week it went belly up for good. I tried numerous uninstalls/reinstalls, fixes, running everything as a domain admin... nothing worked. What about troubleshooting? Ha... there's a cryptic HRESULT error here, one there, nothing telling you what the real problem is (ok, they told you TOO REAL what the problem was, but not in pure English). Maybe some error code being 6661234666... gee... thanks... and the coffee is over on the {E052E45D-B487-4593-AF2B-D6283E21C43A}. Then yesterday I get a new message in the event log referring to an error log... sweet! More details. Nope... just loaded with a memory dump. OK, while I'd love to read memory dumps and understand them like Tess can, I don't have time to learn that crap right now. Looking at that page... hell, I get more out of looking at a page of GUID's! When one of my important VMs was no longer booting, I finally gave up and made the [gradual] switch.

</rant>

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 vs. VMWare Server v1.0.3
The damn Virtual Server 2005 R2 admin interface, a crappy Web site, was always finicky. Right when I got VMWare Server I loved the console approach, both on the server and connecting remotely. I love the little things in VMWare Server... configurable buttons to shut down or restart or recycle a machine... easily binding CD/DVDs or floppies, but not having to connect them. Just so much I like about VMWare Server over Virtual Server 2005 R2.

And before someone says "oh, VMRCPlus is a much better interface" I say "whatever". Completely unsupported and it takes an act of god to get it working between my laptop and server (yes, I tried for DAYS). And the constant crashes? Yeah, no thanks.

VMWare Server on the other hand... it just worked... piece-o-cake. The only complicated thing is figuring out the port necessary to connect to it from outside my home office.

Microsoft VirtualPC 2007 vs. VMWare Workstation 6
I'm really liking Workstation 6 too... still getting used to it though. But I like it a lot more than VirtualPC 2007. Oh, get this... it even has extra goodness that helps you setup remote debugging into a VM straight from Visual Studio 2005. No lie... there's even a freaking VMWare toolbar in VS2005! Now THAT is slick!

Snapshots are easier to use than undo or differencing disks in VPC/VS. I see why you VMWare people rave over MSFT's solutions... it's just better.

And this is soooo cosmetic, but the GUI consoles of both VMWare Server and Workstation are just 10x better than what we have with the Microsoft solution.

But Microsoft's solution is getting better with Windows 2008? Great... woopee... I'm not waiting, nor am I tying my virtualization stuff to a specific OS. Where's the support for Vista going? If it's there, you have to mine for it, and frankly, I don't have that time for that. I'd rather drop $200 and walk away saying I've got a good, AND SUPPORTED solution (which is FAR more than I can say for Virtual Server 2005 R2). Anyway, even if it is, something tells me VMWare will update their stuff too.

So far there are three things I'm still struggling with:

Some VMs are just slow. I've made sure the latest VMWare tools are installed. I've deleting the keyboard and mouse from Device Manager to let it re-find the drivers. I've made sure I've got the right SCSI driver installed. I've defragged... they just still run slow. Chalking this up to "newbie" for now.
Moving VM's from one machine to another. Part of this is just not knowing what files is what. I created a new MOSS developer image on my server and tried to move it to my laptop, but even though I'm trying to create a new VM using an existing disk in Workstation, it won't ever take it (I click FINISH so many times, but it never finishes).
Shrinking the virtual hard disks. That same MOSS developer image came out to roughly 14GB, but I know it can be smaller... yet I'm still trying to find where the compact process is.

Oh, and VMWare can import VS/VPC2007 virtual machines! What about going the other way? There's a utility, WinImage, for $30 that claims it can go from VMWare ->VHD files. We'll see... I'll give it a shot in a while.

So that's that. I'm still running VirtualPC 2007 on my laptop as so many things ship as VHD files, but if I can help it, I think I'm going to make the clean cut over to VMWare.

Technorati tags: vmware, virtualization, virtualpc, virtual server, vmware workstation, vmware server

posted on Thursday, August 16, 2007 10:36 PM

Feedback

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/17/2007 2:00 AM Aaron Tamblyn

Great to see a MVP expressing criticism where its due. BTW How painful was it to move the machines across to VMWare?

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/17/2007 2:13 AM Chris Nurse

How cool is VMWARE 6! Create a group of machines and they all get booted in the correct order, and there you have a virtual Domain if you need it!

On your performance problem, have you tried running the VMmachine from a different (perhaps USB) drive, as oppose to running it from your Boot drive. We've all found running VM's where your host is on one disk and your VM is on another gives good performance increase.

Chris.

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/17/2007 3:36 AM William

You have just convinced me to try and make the switch. I have no doubt that Microsoft will make up these inadequacies in future releases, and hopefully provided an easy method to migrate back from VMWare :). Thanks so much for posting this.

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/17/2007 4:21 AM Stephen Huen

What took you so long to switch :-)

>> Shrinking the virtual hard disks. That same MOSS developer image came out to roughly 14GB, but I know it can be smaller... yet I'm still trying to find where the compact process is. >>

Inside guest machine, control panel > vm tools > shrink tab. I would do a defragment (inside guest machine) first though.

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/17/2007 7:09 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Aaron-
Easy... just File->Import.

Chris-
Goes without saying. On the server where I run VMWare Server, I've got my VMs on a dedidated 10k RPM drive. On the laptop, they are on a 2nd internal 7200RPM drive.

Stephen-
Thanks... I'll take a look at it.

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/17/2007 8:23 AM Sahil Malik

Amen Bro - welcome to the new religon.

I've been using VMWare Workstation exclusively for all my virtualization needs for a while now, and the time saved has paid me back more than $200, many times over.

Now the server based product, vs VMWare Workstation, it'd be hella nice if you could blog about those a bit as well. (Esp. where can I download the free server based product, and what does it get me over Workstation 6).

BTW - the real kicker is, everything works on Vista.

Word of advice, if you ever wish to move VMs between multiple machines, always shut them down first before taking a snapshot.

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/17/2007 11:39 AM Bryant Likes

Not to mention support for 64-bit virtual machines in VMWare which Virtual PC 2007 doesn't support. So if you want to do 64-bit development you need to switch to VMWare.

I'm still getting used to it, but starting to like it more. My only complaint is the files aren't as simple as the VPC ones are.

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/17/2007 12:26 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Sahil-
Here's VMWare Server 1.0.3 (http://www.vmware.com/products/server/). The biggest benefit is that it's suited more to a server environment. I can configure machines to automatically boot up when the host OS boots, or shut down when the host shuts down. Great for server based stuff. Workstation gives you more features and capabilities though (hence the $200).

Bryant-
No doubt there... VMWare is very liberal with the creation of files. They are well documented though in the manual.

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/17/2007 2:49 PM Andre

The snapshots feature on VMWare Workstation 6 is really amazing. I've been a user since version 5, using it for about 12 months now. I cannot imagine switching to any other product. You can maintain multiple snapshots in workstation and enter notes on each (ie: base OS, patches, VS 2005 installed, SharePoint installed) making it easy to roll back at any point. You can also branch off a snapshot, so if you make a small tweak that will be reused you can still go back to it (ex: go back to VS2005 snapshot and branch off to a .NET 3.5 setup by clicking the 'Go To' button). The UI makes this soooo easy to do. Features like this are extremely useful for testing purposes. For those of you who have not used it yet, give it a try with the free trial download and you will see what we are talking about (I am NOT a VMWare employee or shareholder [yet]). At under $200 I think it is worth every penny.

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/17/2007 9:29 PM Bob Fox

Bout time Boy! Welcome to the functional virtualization world

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/18/2007 1:08 PM John Ross

Originally I rolled with a 14 Gig image and compacted things. It seemed to cause flakiness so I blew it away and now always go with a 20 Gig virtual drive.

Also, I'm working on a process to automate the VM installation process with sysprep. There are still a few hiccups to work out with the config db, but I'm determined to get it right!

As for your slowness issue -- I always make sure I've got the hardware acceleration enabled for the video adapter and that I've got two virtual processors configured for the image. My 20 gig images scream!

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/20/2007 8:38 AM Andy B

Re: Speed - as mentioned above, always use a separate disc for the VM and the host. Portable hard-discs are excellent for this.

There is a trade off between size and speed when setting up your VM's discs. You can have a disc as 'growable' or 'fully allocated'. Growable is smaller in that it only adds to the virtual disc file when more space is required - but it's slower, apparently, as it has to add that space. Fully allocated is, apparently, faster, as the virtual disc file is created at the maximum size to begin with - but it isn't as space efficient.

Personally, I didn't find much of a difference on my machine, so I just use growable discs, but I have met people who said it made a difference for them.

Um, one tip from a colleague I've had to use occasionally - to prevent VMs swapping memory to disk add the falling line to the bottom of the VMX file.

mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"

I make no claims about it's safety - but it did seem to stop the disk thrashing in a couple of my VMs that kept happening - even when I had plenty of physical memory free.

Normally, though, I find my VMs are acceptably quick. I'd prefer them to be quicker, but at least they're faster than VirtualPC

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 8/21/2007 6:03 PM nick swan

hurrah well done for making the move!

Now you need to get a solid state drive to run those VM's off! :-)
Anyone got any experience of solid state drives?

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 9/7/2007 10:12 AM Dieter Tack

<Quote>
as so many things ship as VHD files
</Quote>

VMWare has a tool (VMWare Converter) that can converts VHD files into VMWare Virtual Machines.

Regs

# re: I've made the switch, and I'm not looking back 9/7/2007 3:38 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Dieter-
True... but Workstation has that baked into the product as an import routine. In addition, another tool called WinImage will convert VMW disks -> VHD.

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