VMware Server 2 Beta?

Well, I don’t quite get the lure of VMWare Server 2. Given that I simply love the other virtualization products this one has got me. I downloaded the Windows Version at a hefty few hundred MBs and there are things which should be in it that are missing. The newly designed web-based console application has a higher suckage factor than the lean and mean VMware console that ran by itself. I don’t particularly care for the whole Tomcat experience with it either. VMware Server 1.0.x runs great here on Linux or Windows (except for Server 2008; which I am building some services on). But I guess the fine folks at VMware figure that we need some bloat to the excellent 1.0 series just to make it worthwhile. Here’s my list of features that could have made it into VMware 2 instead of the way it looks now:

1. Build some consistency in VMware supported versions. Some VMware player appliances cannot load on Server because of a error stating it was created with a version at a higher level. Pffft. Come on VMware make it all work. Its not a platform where we can move appliances around, test on different core OS’es if we cannot package it up and install an appliance built with workstation or whatever.
2. On Linux, how about some consistency with released Linux kernels? I don’t really get why things break so badly and we need the “any any” patches. How about some kind of patching update technology with the new releases?
3. On Windows, how about making the 1.0 code tree load on Server 2008? Geez. VMware Server 2.0 is simply not ready yet so I have to install 1.0 on Vista? Vista does not do well with anything more than playing mp3s; lets face it. So I moved to just running Microsoft Server operating systems as desktops. Server 2003 runs pretty good as a desktop for most things I need. Server 2008 rules.

All in all though, running VMware on a patched up Ubuntu 8.04 is not so hard and on 7.10 its easy. Installing it on Server 2003 is easy as pie too. What is going to be the real test for me is when I change gears and start evaluating Hyper-V. Hyper-V looks plenty cool but I need to have two 2008 Servers for the best effort. I can do that though

Blogology

So this makes a new career of posts to this venerable piece of junk. I’m very committed to making this new and exciting with challenging posts, speculation, ideas transmitted. But if its just like what it has been for a few years; don’t blame me.