Wez Posted November 1, 2008 Author Share Posted November 1, 2008 Is 3i just a smaller version of ESX 3.5? Does 3i support vmfs on local IDE/SATA drives? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted November 1, 2008 Share Posted November 1, 2008 Is 3i just a smaller version of ESX 3.5? Does 3i support vmfs on local IDE/SATA drives? It didn't work with the chipset I had on my two test boxes, but that doesn't say much... Let me dig out the supported hardware list quickly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted November 1, 2008 Share Posted November 1, 2008 ESX3i is what VMWare are heading towards, it is a hypervisor as opposed to legacy virtualization. Hmmm... I'll type up the difference between legacy and hypervisor based virtualization a bit later, suffice to say a hypervisor based system has more direct access to the hardware and hence is slightly faster however it does sometimes require virtual-aware OS. esx3i - supported hardware - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/Hardware_support.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted November 1, 2008 Share Posted November 1, 2008 Hmmm, just read the top of the thread, is your test box still the p4? I don't think that processor supports either Intel-VT or AMD Pacificia which means pretty much any hypervisor is out. In which case your best bet is something like linux with vmware server or wink2k8 with virtual server 2005 (Either which way it will be legacy virtualization) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted November 1, 2008 Author Share Posted November 1, 2008 I have ESX 3.5 running fine at the moment on my P4 test box, I have created the datastore and will create some virtual machines this afternoon. ESXi looks like a smaller version of ESX, ie there is no host operating system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted November 2, 2008 Author Share Posted November 2, 2008 Well I now have a Win2K Pro and Win XP Pro Performance Edition installed, fully up to date and running vmware tools, have to say even on my little test box they work very very well. I am going to try some different flavours of Linux and then maybe move onto solaris 10 and possibly OS2 Warp, although warp doesnt seem to be supported anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted November 3, 2008 Author Share Posted November 3, 2008 Well my little desktop is now happily running CentOS 5.2 and Fedora 9 as well the two windows VMs already created. Very impressed with how it handles the loads. Looking to trial it at work on a spare HP DL380 G4 with approx 330gb usable space in raid 5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chilli Posted November 3, 2008 Share Posted November 3, 2008 Well I now have a Win2K Pro and Win XP Pro Performance Edition installed, fully up to date and running vmware tools, have to say even on my little test box they work very very well. I am going to try some different flavours of Linux and then maybe move onto solaris 10 and possibly OS2 Warp, although warp doesnt seem to be supported anymore. I run vmware server 2.0 at home using a host centos x64, it runs opensolaris 10, ubuntu and centos (web servers). I recommend OpenSolaris for dev/servers and Ubuntu makes a pleasant desktop platform Also, for workstation usage, Sun's Virtual Box is excellent - great if you just want to experiment and play around without the effort of setting up servers. We have to use windoze at work (outlook etc as usual) but I'm going to run virtual box ubuntu desktop for general stuff and I switch to the vmware server OpenSolaris / CentOS platforms for more long standing stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted November 3, 2008 Author Share Posted November 3, 2008 Have you had any experience in porting sparc compiled applications to solaris on x86? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chilli Posted November 3, 2008 Share Posted November 3, 2008 I'm afraid not, I've never developed for sparc as such. Do you have something specific that needs porting, with source code, in C? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted November 3, 2008 Author Share Posted November 3, 2008 Our main platform is Sparc based but looking to do some testing on some x86 boxes, we have been told a simple recompile of the code on x86 should be enough to get us going, only time will tell I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chilli Posted November 3, 2008 Share Posted November 3, 2008 I think that depends how well written the original code was, could range from "it works perfectly" to "it won't even start up / riddled with new bugs" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted November 3, 2008 Share Posted November 3, 2008 I think that depends how well written the original code was, could range from "it works perfectly" to "it won't even start up / riddled with new bugs" In theory, Sun have always boasted that solx86 and solsparc were compatible.... I've not struggled before when cross compiling but it all depends on how bespoke the application is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted November 3, 2008 Author Share Posted November 3, 2008 In theory, Sun have always boasted that solx86 and solsparc were compatible.... I've not struggled before when cross compiling but it all depends on how bespoke the application is. Is there any chance the application will work without a recompile or am I living in a dream world, no harm in trying it I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeordieSteve Posted November 4, 2008 Share Posted November 4, 2008 How come VMWare can manage so many VM's as Virtual Server? We're sticking VMWare on our new DR site, possibly across EMEA if it works well enough Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted November 4, 2008 Share Posted November 4, 2008 Is there any chance the application will work without a recompile or am I living in a dream world, no harm in trying it I guess. Hmmm, seriously doubt it... I'm not 100% sure but I reckon they use different endians. http://developers.sun.com/solaris/articles/support_for_x86.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted November 4, 2008 Share Posted November 4, 2008 How come VMWare can manage so many VM's as Virtual Server? We're sticking VMWare on our new DR site, possibly across EMEA if it works well enough Because windows is incredibly wasteful with processor time and memory. VMware gives the OS's only what they need and this allows the spare time/capacity to run other instances of the OS. RAM rather than CPU's are the real limiting factor. For each core you need about 4-8Gb of RAM to really get the most out of a system as RAM shouldn't really be over allocated to avoid swapping. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted November 4, 2008 Share Posted November 4, 2008 Also, for workstation usage, Sun's Virtual Box is excellent - great if you just want to experiment and play around without the effort of setting up servers. I use VirtualBox at work. My main desktop is Kubuntu based but I have a Windows XP machine running under VirtualBox. I run it in seamless desktop mode on one side of the desktop cube. Very handy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted November 4, 2008 Author Share Posted November 4, 2008 Not having much luck with OS2, was worth a go though, doesnt get past the 2nd boot disk I wonder if our OS2 app will run on NT4 or Win2K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted November 4, 2008 Share Posted November 4, 2008 Not having much luck with OS2, was worth a go though, doesnt get past the 2nd boot disk I wonder if our OS2 app will run on NT4 or Win2K. http://aparateys.blogspot.com/2007/04/os2-warp-4-under-vmware-workstation-553.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted November 4, 2008 Author Share Posted November 4, 2008 http://aparateys.blogspot.com/2007/04/os2-warp-4-under-vmware-workstation-553.html Thats great thanks I think the issue maybe that ESX server for some crazy reason doesnt support IDE as guest hdd, only SCSI drives, why they chose to do this is beyond me. Workstation however does support IDE drives in the VM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted November 4, 2008 Share Posted November 4, 2008 Thats great thanks I think the issue maybe that ESX server for some crazy reason doesnt support IDE as guest hdd, only SCSI drives, why they chose to do this is beyond me. Workstation however does support IDE drives in the VM Maybe they didn't expect OS's out of the ark to be used, in a Datacenter...which is where ESX belongs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted November 4, 2008 Author Share Posted November 4, 2008 maybe they didn't expect os's out of the ark to be used, in a datacenter...which is where esx belongs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted November 4, 2008 Share Posted November 4, 2008 Maybe they didn't expect OS's out of the ark to be used, in a Datacenter...which is where ESX belongs. Do you work for a government/local authority Wez? I can't imagine anyone else still using such old tech Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted November 4, 2008 Author Share Posted November 4, 2008 Do you work for a government/local authority Wez? I can't imagine anyone else still using such old tech Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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