I’ve been playing around with two cool virtualization technologies. One is on my almost brand spanking new Windows Server 2008 box. This box is a AMD64 dual core 6000+ with 6g of memory. It runs most stuff very robustly and VMware Server and/or Hyper-V are no exception. Unfortunately, on Ubuntu 7.10 AMD64 I can no longer seem to get the Console Monitor to work no matter what I try; so I moved things off that box. Now I have VMware Workstation installed on a Server 2003 box and my 2008 Workstation (uhm Server). Truth be told, Server 2008 is an excellent workstation OS. It flat outflies Vista 64 which I have one of as well. Now I just use the Vista box to serve up my new HP printer software.

I found a few interesting newbie things with Hyper-V which took me a bit to deal with. Ubuntu 7.10 no matter what just won’t install and its been reported a few times. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 server and it works fine but you have to assign a legacy network card and you also have to “associate the real card” with the virtual card or at least I did to make networking work. Then you can just reboot the VM and networking/dhcp comes right up. Hyper-V is pretty cool though once you learn its little tricks and traps. I can see why VMware is threatened. It does some stuff and I’m just starting. Bundling it with an Operating System is smart. Damned smart Microsoft. Good one! That makes VMWare have to give things away like ESXi.

On to VMware Server. As I noted, something is just wrong with Server on Ubuntu 7.10 and I don’t know what. Server Console won’t work but I can RDP and ssh to the guests. What’s up with that? VMware Server seems to be a back step since it does all kinds of weird stuff with web and console. Forget about it!

I could probably just stabilize on Hyper-V but I have been a VMWare customer for years and I want it to work. VMware Workstation is still plenty nice but I think VirtualBox threatens it with its transparent or seamless modes for guest applications. I have not tried VirtualBox on Ubuntu yet; but I may do that at work. Truth is, it appears that VirtualBox is a great personal virtualization thing but I cannot serve up images. Since I am involved with building out a support lab that is all virtual for work; I need to serve up the guests.

I also wonder what’s next for VMWare? They seem to be giving away stuff now and Hyper-V is plenty cool and its something for VMware to worry over. Gnaw that bone VMWare guys. You need some competition! It gives the rest of us new toys and tools to test out.