Re: Windows Vista (puke) and Windows Server 2008

[Lukas Beeler <lukas.beeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 18:19,  <daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I believe that it was the January issue of Maximum PC that reviews,
> compares, and contrasts VMware with Hyper-V.  I seem to recall that
> Microsoft's product limits you to Windows-only installations.  If you have
> no intentions to ever do anything with Linux that may not be an issue.

Hyper-V runs Linux just fine. Selected distributions are fully
supported (i believe it's RHEL and SLES). Just as it is with VMware. I
run two production Linux VMs on our Hyper-V cluster, and we haven't
had any issues with them. They run Debian, which is not officially
supported.

However, if your focus is extensively on Linux, VMware may indeed be
the better choice.

> I've been kicking around the idea of downloading VMware Player to play
> with Linux.  I've never heard of Virtual Box but may give that a try. I've
> never used any of them but don't want be limited.

It really depends on your need. For server virtualization with
performance requirements, Hyper-V, XenServer and ESX are great
choices, but if you intend to use your VMs for development your might
go better with an OS-hosted virtualization product like VMware
Workstation.

I'm the local Microsoft fanboy, and even i think VirtualPC is a POS -
it doesn't even run x64 VMs, which makes it absolutely unusuable for
most of the tasks i need my test VMs for. VMware Workstation is IMO
still the best product for an OS hosted virtualization product, albeit
not free. I've heard good things about Sun's product, but i've never
looked at it.

As of today, we have a production Hyper-V cluster in the company, i
have VMware Workstation on my laptop and i have multiple Hyper-V
testservers. Only issue is that moving VMs from my laptop to the
company servers is a bit of an hassle, but possible.