Re: VMWare - Call me thick

[Simon Haslam <simon_haslam@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

VMware provides an abstraction layer above the hardware - your VM
doesn't s=
ee the physical disk or devices themselves but a special VMware version.
No=
rmally the disks made available to the guest VM would be carved out of the
=
underlying drives, though it is possible to pass through raw disk devices
w=
hich I suppose is what you'd have to do to get WHS to then do the disk
mana=
gement (I don't know how well that would work - you'd need to do some
caref=
ul testing).

Serial/USB devices: you can pass through USB devices to a VM with the
deskt=
op products (not vSphere/ESXi) and presumably serial ports too.

There's also a tool which allows you to take a running physical host and
co=
nvert it to a VM image which can be quite handy.

I don't know if you'll get any Windows activation/licensing issues.

VMware products:
I think your best starting point is to use the free VMware Server (http://w=
ww.vmware.com/products/server/) which runs inside the OS already installed
=
on the host machine.

If your servers aren't heavily utilised I can see benefits from using
VMwar=
e for both power saving and disaster recovery, however you may find you
hav=
e to put a reasonable amount of work in to become familiar enough with it.
=
I suggest you try out VMware Server on a spare PC first to see how you
find=
it.


Simon

--- On Mon, 5/7/10, Neil Wrightson <neilw@xxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Neil Wrightson <neilw@xxxxxxx>
Subject: [ukha_d] VMWare - Call me thick
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Date: Monday, 5 July, 2010, 10:50







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Hi All,

=20

I read with great interest "Martyn Wendon's Four Nodes"=20

In here he mentions VMWare (which I've heard of before) and was thinking

this would be something I would like to implement.

My HA system as it stands has two PC's. A WHS (19" 2RU Box) and a XP
(19"

4RU Box) with Misterhouse, xAP, xPL on it.

I'm looking at reducing this back to a single PC, probably the (19"
4RU

Box).

They both have Digi 8 Port serial cards for the various HA interface bit's

and pieces.

=20

I also have another 8 port Geovision (19" 4RU Box) that is not doing

anything.

=20

My understanding of the VMWare, is that I can create many virtual machines

that can reside inside the one box.=20

These images, once setup, can be transferred between PC box's. So if the
4R=
U

box died, they could be transferred to the 2RU box etc.

=20

So without having to re-create the WHS box, I can make an image as it
stand=
s

and transfer it to the other box as a virtual machine?

If WHS works with VMWare, how does WHS & VMWare handle the way WHS
utilizes

the many hard disks into a single volume?

Does the WHS backups of client PC's still work?

=20

=20

=20

=20

Now for the thick part.

I'm looking on the VMWare website and it just isn't clear to me, what I
nee=
d

to download (and possibly buy).

=20

=20

=20



Regards,=20



Neil Wrightson.=20



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